


therefore you and me (as a result of living, as a result of dying)

by unseeliekey



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (non sexual dont worry), Hallucinations, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mention of suicide attempts, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Post-Game(s), Recovery, Roommates, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Texting, Trauma, Underage Drinking, Virtual Reality, more in a violent way, pregame stuff, rating may change! but probs not in a sexy way, though its atypical self harm, unseeliekey writing a fic that doesnt use that tag? less likely than you think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 151,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unseeliekey/pseuds/unseeliekey
Summary: “But that was a lie! Actually, I’m so in love with Shuichi that I can’t think straight. I wish Saihara-chan had mourned me more!”Why did he think coming here would be a good idea? Even at their most peaceful moments, Kokichi was always playing games with him. Even when he was dead, he still was.What was it he’d said, what feels like years ago? “Now you’ll never ever forget me for the rest of your life?” Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.“I did mourn you,” he says, curling his hands into fists, anger like bile in his throat, burning bitter. He laughs, to get it out. “You- it really fucked me up, you know?” It did. Everything fell apart after that trial. There wasn't time to think- of Kaito, and his smile, confident to the end, who finally got to space. Of Maki, heartbroken in a way that still haunts her face, even when she's standing next to him. Of Kokichi; laughing, teasing Kokichi, with his fingers twirled in his hair, smirking up at Shuichi, lying to his face, accusing him across a court full of people. But they echoed around him. Ghosts, murmuring in his ears, still laughing, one supportive, one mocking.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede & Saihara Shuichi, Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito, Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi, others probably
Comments: 491
Kudos: 839





	1. as a result of loving,

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my big dramatic post-game fic! shit's gonna get dark, lads.  
> i've had kind of an extremely shitty day (credit card issues, ex issues, you know how it goes) so.... angst! and also i already had this chapter mostly written and needed a bit of a break. i just cant write too much fluff when im not in the mood, sorry!!!! werewolf au will finish when im feeling better- hopefully in a few days. also im sorry this isnt very long, i genuinely thought it was longer? huh. 
> 
> anyway! in case you didn't see the tags, this is pretty tragic and dark considering it's postgame. it WILL have a happy ending, and it will have a plot about recovery, but there's also going to be some other... unfortunate events in our boys' future. i like to think that i've got kind of an original plot for them here? i hope so. i hope you like it! i know a lot of people like my fluff and im sorry hsdhsjk. i promise there will be some nice bits! i think theres a few sweet moments in this chapter. anyway, please take care and know it's all going to be okay!

Shuichi went to visit Kokichi the second day after he’d woken up.

The first day, he’d spoken to everyone, spent hours with each of his friends. There’d been something of a party for the survivors, cheap food and nurses with too-bright smiles. He saw Kaito. He saw Kaede. He spent the whole time in something of a fever dream, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him. He couldn’t quite enjoy it, kept glancing anxiously over his shoulder. Tsumugi wasn’t there, which he was glad of- a murmured discussion with Amami revealed that she was in solitary treatment and would be for a while- apparently the way the show ended had taken quite the toll on her. A part of him was sickly gratified by that, the thought that Tsumugi was truly one of them now, broken by her own characters. She was probably in trouble with her superiors. She was probably hoping to make them take the fall.  
He’d noted that most of his… friends, most of the people who had died, were still hooked up to various treatments- that Tojo had something of a limp despite no visible injuries, that Kaito breathed oddly even now, that Kaede would often pause mid-speaking to rub her neck.  
He also noticed that tensions were high, despite the cheer of the party. Unsurprisingly, Shinguji was absent (also in solitary care, from what Shuichi had heard, recovering from crimes that weren’t his to atone for), that Iruma had a nervous note to her voice that he’d never heard before, that she skirted around Gokuhara even as she grinned and talked herself up. Tojo spent the entire party acting as a servant, her head bowed, shame in her voice even as she thanked him. Kaede and Amami seemed close, surprisingly, but even there, there was something grating between them. An unpleasant electricity.

And Kokichi was missing.

He asked Kaito about it, and he clearly grew uncomfortable. “Ah, yeah,” he said. “He’s not locked up, like the other freaks, he just… doesn’t like hanging out with us. I go and visit him sometimes, and so do Gonta and Kaede, but that’s kind of it, I think?” He rubbed the back of his head, the easy grin he’d been wearing (for Shuichi’s sake, for Maki’s,) slipping from his face. “He’s, uh. Not doing too good. We all watch the episodes together, he came down for that, and… I dunno, he seemed pleased with what you did?” A pause. “By which I mean he was expressionless, which I think is a good thing. Anyway, as soon as it ended and we were all running around trying to figure out when you’d wake up, he just- bolted. He hasn’t come out of his room since. We told him about the party,” he adds, almost defensively, as if Shuichi would blame Kokichi’s trauma on Kaito forgetting to invite him to a party.  
He’d almost made a motion to get up and find him, when Kaito grabbed his arm. Shuichi looked at him, his best friend, out of the simulation. They were all a bit weaker, a bit thinner, than they had been inside. Even his hair seemed a bit flatter, bags under his eyes. Shuichi was suddenly hit with all the things he had wanted to say to Kaito, all the things he was burdened to say now. 

“Maybe leave it for a bit,” Kaito had said, his strong voice gentle. “I think he’ll need some time to prepare. And you… you should celebrate. You deserve to just relax, for today.” Then he puffed out his chest and stuck out his thumb, all the false bravado that Shuichi needed. “After all, you are the number one sidekick!”

So Shuichi had stayed, and even after they’d been sent back to their hospital/dorm rooms for curfew he’d stayed up and messaged them all on the disturbingly accurate Monopads they’d been provided, until he’d passed out, and woken up from nightmares, and passed out again.

He woke up at an alarm, had a handful of pills fed to him and things unhooked by nursing staff who looked at him like he was their favourite character come to life. Which he supposed he was. He’d met up with others for breakfast, sat next to Kaede, teased Kaito and Maki, watched the others banter and develop half-baked escape plans from wherever they were being kept.

“Seeing as it’s the last season,” Kaede began, only to be interrupted.

“Because of Shuichi!” Kaito yelled, knocking him in the shoulder. A few whistles and cheers were sent out from the more rowdy group members, while Shuichi flushed and wished he was anywhere else.

Kaede gave him a smile that could make flowers grow, and then she returned to speaking, still with that sunny look on her face. “Seeing as it’s the last season, they’ll probably want to keep us around for… press, and stuff. I just think we should be cautious about what we do. They’re probably angry.” 

Shuichi had almost forgotten how analytical she could be, the sharp gaze behind those soft eyes, the drive to fix things that had led her to kill someone. 

Anyway, after that, he was shown by some excited staff to his new room, which was set up exactly for his tastes, looked nothing like the simulation minus the giant fucking cameras on the walls, and had some hospital equipment lying around. He hated it, and spent a while fucking up the bed to be less clean, and spreading all his papers everywhere, rearranging everything he could because this was The Ultimate Detective’s room, Saihara Shuichi’s, the star of the killing game, and he was none of that.

He hadn’t had much time to mill over it in the game, but _fuck_ , his whole personality was a lie. His whole life. He might as well have been a fictional character. He might as well have been fake. And the person he was before…

Shuichi looks at his hands and wonders what they’d done. If the person before the Ultimate Detective was looking forward to kill. If he would be angry that his… body, his mind, whatever was left of him, had ended what he loved.  
He feels a little bit of it, if he thinks too hard or doesn’t think at all. Feels a little bit of dark loneliness creeping in. A nihilism that he doesn’t remember.

Midway through alphabetically arranging the books (all his favourites) in his bookshelf, he gets hit by the sudden impulse that living this lie, under the thumb of Danganronpa, his identity broken and fractured and nothing for him outside of this stupid fucking- hospital, or prison, or compound, or whatever it is- it’s just the same. It’s the same as the killing game. And even if he gets out there will be nothing. Existence is long and painful and he can already pinpoint several unpleasant things he’ll need to do- interviews, probably, periods reading over legal documents, talking to whatever people he left behind. Just the thought of it makes him panic.   
_I'm fucked,_ he thinks. _Beyond trapped. I'm just- ruined, every part of my life is either dictated or gone, and I have nothing to do but wait for Danganronpa to get sick of me._

So he drops the book he’s holding, leaves the others messed up on the shelf, and stands to leave. Shuichi wanders down the hall, thankful that he doesn’t bump into anyone else, looking at the nameplates. He thinks most people are at lunch, so he lingers a little, tracing over their names in the door, half-expecting pixelated images above them.

_Ouma Kokichi._

He knocks, twice, and waits. A few seconds hang in the air, and he’s about to knock again, when he hears someone sigh, the sound heavy enough to carry through the door.

“Just come in, Saihara.”

Shuichi doesn’t bother to wonder how Kokichi knows it’s him, and instead obliges, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him with a quiet ‘click’.

The room is dim, the blinds up halfway, most of the light coming from a string of neon beads hung over Kokichi’s bed, flashing in different colours. A song is playing from a set of speakers under the desk in his room, dark and jagged and set up with a bunch of brightly-colored stationary. It gets in his brain a little bit, the song, the not-quite human murmurs, the repetitive melody. Vocaloid, it sounds like- definitely not he would have expected.  
The room looks like a combination between a regular teenager’s bedroom and Kokichi’s lab- the thought of which makes Shuichi stiffen. It’s even got the big pinboard, though this one appears to be filled with nonsense. A collection of theater masks hang on a wall. Clothes are scattered all over the floor.

Kokichi is sitting by the window, gazing blankly between the blinds. When Shuichi enters, he doesn’t even look over, his chin in his hand. The song is loud despite its peaceful singing. The long, rainbow cord wrapped around the speakers twitches and lifts up, as Kokichi picks up his phone and turns the volume down a few beats.

“Thanks,” Shuichi says.

He simply shrugs, still looking out the window.

Shuichi tucks his hands in his pockets. He’s never been particularly fidgety, but the tension here creeps up his spine. “You’d probably be able to see more if you lifted the blinds,” he tries.

That, finally, gets Kokichi to look over. His mouth curls into a dry grin, folding an arm over his raised knee. He looks tiny, curled up like this, and so sick. “Ah, you think I’m looking for something? Nishishishi. I’m simply enjoying the atmosphere.”

“The atmosphere of being moody by a window?”

“You got it.”

There’s a lull in the conversation. The song returns to an almost anxious beat, the murmuring growing a little bitter. Then it ends with a final chord- and then starts again.

“Have you got this song on loop?”

Kokichi looks back out the window. “Yup.”

Shuichi spends a moment listening to the lyrics, trying to make sense of it. He doesn’t quite get it, but he supposes it’s pleasant enough. He shifts. 

Kokichi sighs heavily, turning his whole body away from the window, tucking up his legs. Shuichi realizes that part of the reason he looks so small is that he’s out of his trademark uniform- just tucked up in a big shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. “Come sit down, Saihara. Or leave. I don’t mind either way.” He tilts his head to the side, and the echo of a familiar smile appears on his face. “Or is that a lie?”

Shuichi puffs air through his nose in absence of a laugh, and moves to sit on Kokichi’s bed, only a few feet away from the Ultimate Supreme Leader. (How did he ever think that was a real thing?) Glancing sideways, he notices a picture washi-taped to the lamp. Ten people, all in masks, clearly drawn by Kokichi.  
His stomach drops.

“Don’t,” Kokichi warns. “If you want to talk about the game, go ahead. But… not that.”

Shuichi nods. He gets it, but he doesn’t. There’s something about the picture- hand drawn, stuck by his bed, people that aren’t real. There’s a lump in his throat.  
What did he want to say about the game? So much. So much it’s almost pointless to even start. He could talk forever and he wouldn’t be done. “I’m sorry,” he says, as a start.

“Is this ‘I’m sorry you went through that’ or a ‘I’m apologizing?’ Because I really hope it’s not the latter.” Kokichi drops his face into his knees, staring at the ground. 

The honesty here is really throwing him off. He supposes he should have expected it. He spent a lot of time thinking about what Kokichi would be like if he weren’t trying to beat the game. What not fake-mastermind Kokichi was like. At a guess, he’s probably emotionally worn out from knowing the game is over. Already trying to plan for what Danganronpa will do next. Ashamed, maybe.  
(Still got those deductive skills, mister faker?)

“Both, I guess,” Shuichi responds, pulling at his collar. “I should have never taken you seriously.”

“Ha.” Kokichi sneers. “It’s okay, I’m a brilliant liar, I know. I never expected stupid Saihara to see through me.”

“But I did.” Shuichi says that without thinking, then pauses. “I mean- a few times. I should have thought it over more, when I did.” Whenever they spent time together. After the knife game, when Kokichi declared he wanted his heart and not his life. After any of the class trials. Especially after Gonta’s. After the…. Love suite. After the motive video debacle. After Shinguji’s trial. After Kaede’s- after the sewers. After he declared himself as the mastermind, somehow. There could’ve been a way. Any time they hung out, any time Shuichi had that little twinge of ‘this lie seems out of place’. Out of all the deaths, this is one that Shuichi feels like he could have stopped the most. He spent so long thinking about Kokichi, and for what? To never act on it?

Kokichi makes a ‘peh’ sound and turns sideways, stretching out a leg and hugging the other to his chest. “I was expecting Saihara-chan to see through me. I was hoping Shumai would help me. I was so desperate to be friends with my favourite detective!” His bottom lip wobbles and for a moment Shuichi’s gut clenches.  
Then he turns back, a finger to his lips. “Just kidding. I can’t stand being around Protagonist Saihara. He drives me crazy. I’m so mad at him for seeing through my plan, that I almost wish I killed him instead.”

“Kokichi-”

“But that was a lie! Actually, I’m so in love with Shuichi that I can’t think straight. I wish Saihara-chan had mourned me more!”

Why did he think coming here would be a good idea? Even at their most peaceful moments, Kokichi was always playing games with him. Even when he was dead, he still was.  
What was it he’d said, what feels like years ago? “Now you’ll never ever forget me for the rest of your life?” Yeah. Yeah. _Yeah._

“I did mourn you,” he says, curling his hands into fists, anger like bile in his throat, burning bitter. He laughs, to get it out. “You- it really fucked me up, you know?” It did. Everything fell apart after that trial. There wasn't time to think- of Kaito, and his smile, confident to the end, who finally got to space. Of Maki, heartbroken in a way that still haunts her face, even when she's standing next to him. Of Kokichi; laughing, teasing Kokichi, with his fingers twirled in his hair, smirking up at Shuichi, lying to his face, accusing him across a court full of people. But they echoed around him. Ghosts, murmuring in his ears, still laughing, one supportive, one mocking. _Remember when you cared about me? When we sat together and had tea and then you never looked any further?_

Kokichi goes still for a long moment. Shuichi spent a lot of time thinking about this exact expression- the frozen look on his face, like he didn't plan ahead for this. Post-hangar, he’d decided that it meant Kokichi was being honest. Either that, or something had surprised him, and he needed a moment to recover.  
Eventually, it twists into a smirk. “So, I really did steal your heart, huh?”

“Kokichi.”

He sits up straight. “That’s the second time you’ve called me by my first name. Do you think we’re friends?”

“I-” Shuichi certainly thinks they’re intimate enough. He’s seen Kokichi’s guts spread over the floor. 

“Well, good, because we are. Besties, actually. I’ve been waiting for this day for so long! I’m so glad to finally steal you from Astronaut-kun.” Kokichi clasps his hands together, eyes practically sparkling.

“Is this a defense mechanism or something?”

Kokichi grins, leaning back again. “You got me. Could also have something to do with the fact I literally am not a real person, and that everything I think is a lie anyway, so lying more makes no real difference. But I suppose that goes for you, too, soooooooo… guess it’s just a me problem.”

Shuichi freezes up. Bored. Angry. False memories flit in and out of his mind. He’s not… wrong.

“Cat got your tongue?” Kokichi tilts his head, back to looking pensive. “Poor Saihara-chan. I bet you just want to _die_.”

He looks over, alarmed, his hands unclenching. He can feel little red marks from his nails, his fingers tight. 

Kokichi hums, out of tune with the song still playing- has it already looped again during this conversation? Shuichi can’t remember. It’s chirping in the back of his head, murmuring, a list of things, too innocent to be natural here. Curry, pots, shoes, shampoo. A shopping list. Will they ever leave here? Will they ever be presented with choices again? “I’ll tell you a secret,” Ultimate Liar says casually, tucking himself up again. “They won’t let you kill yourself. It just gets you stuck up in solitary, like serial killer-kun.”

“How many times did you try?” Shuichi asks, quietly. 

Kokichi considers it. “Three times. I got really close, the first time, too. But then they kept fucking watching me. I tried again while I was still in intensive care, and I didn’t even get close that time. Then I tried again when I got out- don’t tell them that, they’ll stick me in the ward again. Gonta stopped me, that time.” He huffs a laugh. “Ironic, considering.”

“God.” Shuichi stares at his hands again. Then he presses them into his forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? It’s not your fault I didn’t account for having to deal with the consequences of playing evil for a while.” Kokichi laughs again, his usual giggle, his voice growing higher and clearly more distressed. “I mean, that was kind of the whole thing, you know? Someone needed to die, I needed to be evil. They were meant to cancel each other out. No one would mourn, and I wouldn’t have to- try and pick up the pieces. I wasn’t- Gonta wasn’t- I wasn’t meant to see any of you again.” He breaks off in another laugh, and for the first time since Shuichi set foot in here, they lock eyes. “Especially not you. Trustworthy Saihara. Have I stolen your heart, Shuichi? How much do you think of me? Do you hate me?”

“I couldn-”

“Nevermind.” Kokichi slips off the window seat. “I don’t want to hear it, actually. It would negate the whole point of dying.”

“But you just said-”

“Poor Saihara-chan,” he murmurs, crossing over to the bed, and for a moment Shuichi flashes back to that incredibly confusing moment in the love suite. He can’t tell if he’s relieved when Kokichi simply sits beside him and leans his head on his shoulder. “Our hero escapes, and he wakes up, and he has to come and deal with crazy Kokichi. What a shame. Poor Saihara.” He sighs dramatically, closing his eyes. For a moment, he looks peaceful.

Shuichi almost- almost puts an arm around him. “Do you resent me, Ouma-kun?”

Kokichi doesn’t comment on the switch in names. Instead, he freezes. And then he lifts his head, and he’s got his neutral expression on, the serious one, the one where he’s lost for words. “No.”

“N-no?”

“I have never resented you. I worked too hard to keep you away to resent you for doing what I wanted.” And here the expression shifts a little- something of a lie in there. Shuichi swallows. 

“I wish I’d tried harder.”

“I wish you’d tried less hard! It might’ve worked, then.”

Shuichi finds himself laughing before he can stop himself. Kokichi’s indignant expression just makes him snicker harder. “S-sorry! Sorry, I just-”  
Before he can begin properly apologizing, Kokichi joins in, a peal of his usual giggles spilling from his throat. Shuichi breaks, laughing harder, as Kokichi sinks into his side and they end up leaning together, still laughing until their stomachs hurt.  
When they finally calm down, he feels tired. He doesn’t want to move, just wants to stay here peacefully and wait until the laughter cramps fade away.

Kokichi flops backwards onto the bed, and Shuichi moves to lean against one of the pillow piles. “Fuck,” Kokichi says. “God, we are so screwed.”

“Do you mean Danganronpa?”

Kokichi’s eyes flick to him, a little sly. “Mm. I’m sure they’re going to milk every drop they can get. You may have ended the show, but you’ve definitely cursed yourself into a life in the spotlight.”

Shuichi shudders at the thought- it’s what he’s known since they first told him he was awake, that he was in the Danganronpa compound, that they’d care for him while he recovered. He really needs to properly read through the contract he signed. Does it count if it was basically a different person who signed it?  
He looks back to Kokichi, and a pang of nostalgia hits him. A _what-if_ that he doesn’t think will ever leave. “Well, let’s just decide from the get-go that we’re trustworthy, right? And let’s work together. I’m sure we’ll be able to handle it if we put our brains together.”

It’s meant to be light-hearted, and gentle, and he’s not expecting Kokichi to reply so quietly. “I should have told you from the start.”

“W-well, you had no real reason to trust me,” Shuichi stammers, caught off guard. “I mean- it doesn’t matter now…”

“Hm.” Kokichi’s staring at the ceiling. “Alright, we’ll work together. But I won’t work with piano girl.”

“What?” 

The liar sits up and grins, and Shuichi feels like he’s being played with again. “You can do your own investigating with her, if you want. But I barely know her. I’ll team up with you and no one else. You’ll have to team up with others separately.”

“I guess that’s fair…” Was it? Shuichi couldn’t read Kokichi at all. Would he ever be able to?

“Alrighty!” Kokichi hops up, stretching his arms behind his head. “Let’s get started tomorrow. Meet me here after breakfast. We can go sneak around the east wing.”

“Okay,” Shuichi agrees, and for the first time since he woke up, he feels a little more secure.

\--

Kokichi wakes up. Already a bad start.

He rolls over in his bed, blinks angrily up at his stupid fairy lights. Granted, they’re cool, and he never wants to turn them off, but he doesn’t like that he likes anything in this fake little room. It’s why he’s doing his best to cover everything in his own pictures, so that all he can see is stuff _he_ put there, that he decided on.   
His stupid psychoanalyst likes to use them as little Rorschach tests. He hates her guts, perhaps more than any individual he’s ever met in his life. Apparently she was in a killing game once, herself. Apparently she joined Danganronpa to help others recover. Apparently she’s never quite seen anyone like Kokichi before.

Thank Shirogane, Kokichi told her, and then he’d been given a folder of things on identity after VR resets that he’d thrown in the trash as soon as he got back, because he didn’t want to think about DICE.

That’s the only good thing about her, he supposes. She focuses all on the killing game. Doesn’t make him talk about his fake memories. Kokichi is very good at pretending he doesn’t care that they’re fake.

Apparently, the exception to that is around Shuichi. 

He sits up, and stares down at his legs under the sheets. That was embarrassing. That was a mistake. That was a slip up that is going to have severe consequences. Everything that happened yesterday was dangerous and bad and he is five steps back in the game. Back to square one. Off the board. Not even playing anymore.  
He’d spent hours, days on end preparing for what he would say when Shuichi showed up. He was going to go to the party, lie and charm and tease and make a good deal of the class feel even more certain that they hated him, but Shuichi was going to be all soft and sympathetic and look at Kokichi like he was one step closer to figuring him out.  
(Those were the best looks, when Shuichi was thinking that they’d grown a little closer, that he understood another piece of Kokichi. He dreamed about them, wished they’d linger. Wanted more.)  
Unfortunately, Kokichi had revealed all the messy gooey pieces yesterday. Now there were no secrets, no mysteries, no… fun. Shuichi would always be able to tell when he was lying. He made such a terrible performance yesterday. He wonders if they’re filming, recording for another tragic livestream through those too-big security cameras. He wonders if people got off to how vulnerable he was, all the lies lost. If he’s boring now.

Kokichi stands up, and he feels just as tired as he did yesterday, and the day before, and he can’t even think about Shuichi without wanting to puke. But he can’t be boring. He can’t be tragic and delicate- they have enough of those characters already. 

“You and me, you and me, you and me, lovey-dovey,” sings his speakers. He forgot to switch the song off yesterday, and crosses over to do it now. It gets in his head, like that song playing right on the first day the killing game properly began. It’s so pleasant and sweet, hits him with a draining melancholy. All the things he wants.   
He hits pause, and moves over to plug in his phone. He said he’d meet Shu- Saihara today. Kokichi runs a hand through his hair and moves over to his en suite. How fancy. A bathroom, removed of all the things he could hurt himself with. What’s the point of an en suite without a bath?

He considers showering, but doesn’t, just washes his face carefully. Slaps on some makeup he stole from Iruma. The shade of foundation is too yellow for him, not ashy enough. He tries to even it out with moisturizer, covers up the bags under his eyes and flicks eyeliner over his lids. Twists his dull hair in his fingers. Redraws the bags in purple eyeshadow. Sticks hairclips in. (stolen from Akamatsu, these ones. Not like they were sentimental- the hospice staff probably replaced them before she noticed.) Stray hairs frame his face, fly up, curl around his ears. It’s a mess, stringy and greasy, and he probably should shower instead of applying some sort of deodorant that was probably provided specifically for him, that smells like cheap grape flavoring and some sort of minty, planty thing. 

Kokichi switches on a different song while he dresses, more because he doesn’t want to grow sick of the other one. He wants to keep it, keep the feeling of sweet sadness it gave him when he first heard it, the artificial emotions. Just from music. It’s so easy to lie to yourself. The song sticks in his head, though, and he barely hears the new one, obsessing over the lyrics. He wants to listen to it until it rots in his brain.  
He pulls on baggy pants that he painted eyes all over in an impulse a few nights ago. Then he grabs a loose shirt- white, to keep in with his theme. All the clothes they give him are vaguely reminiscent of his uniform. That’s why he keeps cutting them up and drawing on them. 

Moves to the mirror. Poses. Lifts up his shirt to stare at his hip bones and wonders how many voyeurs wanted to wreck him. Lets himself think about the old Shuichi, the one he saw in a video on a video of a stupid, awful show, who was so obsessed with this fucking game. Would he have liked the character Kokichi played? Why would Kokichi care?  
 _Look at me.  
_ Poses again. Fucks up his hair. Sings along, chugs panta, debates tying on that bandanna that’s soaked in sentimental memories that were never real. Tells himself, “you are the Ultimate Leader.” Tries to believe it.

Waits for Shuichi to knock. Knows that breakfast isn’t over yet, that he’s going to be kept back. That asking so much of his time so early was a stupid plan. Half-expects it not to work- as usual. Dances some more. Adds some more eyeliner. Draws freckles on his face and wipes them off. Practices his evil laugh. Spends ten minutes staring at a stupid fucking picture that he drew based off a fake picture in a fake simulation of fake memories. Desperately wishes any of it was real.  
He closes his eyes. He still knows their faces without looking. Still knows all their names, burned into his memory forever, folded up tight, and try as he might he doesn’t _want_ to forget them.. DICE was his life, once. Only it never was. 

“Hey.”

Kokichi tucks the paper away slowly. Shuichi definitely saw it, with the way those dim eyes are moving over him, his face all too worried about his major antagonist. (That might be giving himself a little too much credit.)

He takes a moment to decide on his strategy. Should have been doing this while he got ready. Should have done it before Shuichi woke up, before he set foot in this room. Why does Shuichi always throw him off?

“You didn’t even knock this time!” He whines, pulls out a sniffle, lets his eyes fill with tears. Counts in his head before he cuts it off with a grin. “So rude, Shu-chan. I might start thinking you have untoward expectations.”

He lets Shuichi splutter as he skips over, hooking their arms together. At least that hasn’t changed. “Come on, let’s go poke around.” The smile is sticky on his face.

They wander slowly through the halls of the hospital- it’s really more Kokichi showing him around than anything else, because what is there to investigate? He hasn’t made any plans to escape here. He hasn’t spied on the doctors, because they’re just doctors, and he hasn’t broken into Tsumugi’s room because she’s not even staying here. (Definitely the right call to make. He might have killed her.) If he acts out, he’ll be thrown back into intensive care. There’s no mastermind, no real mystery, just an unpleasant truth.  
What’s the point of investigating if you already know the answer? He wonders if Shuichi misses the lies in the killing game, the sense of something to solve, something to do. He’s nodding along politely as they wander the wing and poke into empty rooms, and he nervously tries to keep Kokichi out of trouble and makes him return the things he grabs, and Kokichi wonders if he’s restless. If his programming is whirring away with no task to complete. If he’s left feeling as empty as Kokichi is.

He has no idea how they do it, the others. Akamatsu bounced back, was already explaining to him about how identity is what you make of it as soon as he woke up. Momota’s obviously having some trouble, staring at himself in the mirror in a way that would be funny if it wasn’t kind of tragic. But he spouted just as many cheesy-protagonist speeches despite that, still declaring himself the envoy of the stars and making a big fuss over their talents. Rantaro laughed and said he was over it by now, that he was just glad he remembered his sisters. (Kokichi had asked if he had found them. Rantaro’s gaze had slid sideways and Kokichi wondered how many games he would have been willing to play if Shuichi hadn’t ended it.) He hasn’t talked much to the others, but he overhears Himiko talking just as stupidly about her MP when he walks by the common room, and Kirumi seems just as servile as before.

It’s a little ironic, that he isn’t reacting like them. He’s the master liar, after all- or at least, he thought he was. Accepting this lie should be a piece of cake. He shouldn’t care that none of it was real, because he can pretend it is. And he does, to the others, because it’s kind of funny to see how frustrated Momota gets when he pretends not to understand that the memories were implanted. He’s still the ultimate supreme leader, with all the hatred that comes with it, and he’s still cruel and haughty and childish and has a gang of (ten) ten thousand members who love him. He just doesn’t believe it. It’s embarrassing really, that he can’t pull off the simplest lie he’s been living for the past few months, one that has all sorts of other lies to back it up. It should be easy. Kokichi can make himself believe anything- that’s the basis of a good lie. You’ve got to believe it yourself, just a bit, or you’ll never convince anyone. He should believe it. He does, sometimes, when he’s sleepy and his vision blurs or when he bumps into Himiko and for a moment he sees a different girl, tiny and red-haired and bossy and _not real._

He’s just off his game because he didn’t expect to be alive, okay? As soon as he gets used to not being dead it’s over for these bitches. Either that, or as soon as he figures out how to kill himself.

It’s funny, actually, because in the simulation he really hadn’t wanted to die- just as much as he hadn’t wanted to kill Miu, or Gonta, which is why he kept his notebook with multiple murder plans and scripts for potential accomplices a secret even after he’d kidnapped Momota, right up until Maki shot him in the back and he realized this was it. He remembers those moments of panic as the press came down, the hysteria that he registers faintly even now, thinking _this is really gonna suck, huh? really, like this?_ and then the pain that followed and that unholy desire to live that shook him to the core, until he woke up screaming.

And now that desperation is donezo, because he’s had enough time to realize that he’s got nothing left to live for. No DICE, no fun detective-thief dances, no barely-even-friends left to help. Just Momota’s pity and Gonta’s awful forgiveness and Akamatsu’s sugar-sweet desire to make friends, and the hatred of everyone else, and Shuichi set to wake up.  
Well, he’s awake now. Kokichi kept himself waiting for that, and now it’s here, and he’s got nothing left, really. There’s no secrets to find in this hospital. No lies left to tell.

Wow, hah, this really isn’t like him. He’ll find something entertaining, some way to contribute to Shuichi’s noble quest of shutting down all of Danganronpa forever. He’s not going to let them win, right? He’s not going to let them break him down and leave him trapped here, rotting from the inside?

“Ouma?” Shuichi asks, his voice far too gentle to be safe. “Are you okay?”

Kokichi spent a lot of time wondering about what it would be like if Shuichi helped him. It was a guilty pleasure, something that crept in when he was at his most miserable. When he was standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, microwaving something because Kirumi wasn’t there to baby him anymore, trying not to think about how vulnerable he was, out and alone. When he was watching the others laugh and knowing that no matter how much he wanted to save them, deep down in the core of him that was nothing but more lies, he wasn’t good like them. What if, in that second trial, Shuichi had looked at Kaito and decided his blind faith was bullshit- that it was unfair, to give Maki more faith than anyone else, to favor his friends so sweetly when they were just as dirty as the blackened. If he’d approached Kokichi afterward, and… something. If he’d grown cautious after Kaede’s death instead of naive. If he stopped thinking about protecting a nebulous concept of ‘the group’ and started thinking about the bigger picture. If they had worked together, ruthless and clever and five steps ahead of everybody else, Shuichi making nice while Kokichi drove wedges into the group, and the two of them managing to pin the ringleader before anyone else died. If he’d had an ally other than Miu. If he hadn’t panicked when she started plotting against him. If he hadn’t kicked into overdrive in response. If he’d been smarter, planned better, ended it earlier, even if it finished in flames. Every second the others spent in that fucking simulation after Kokichi failed was a waste and a burden on his shoulders. Fucking Momota.

“Kokichi?” Shuichi asks again, a hand on his shoulder.

Kokichi snaps out of it, glancing upward. He wrinkles his nose. “Geez, I didn’t know Saihara-chan was so desperate for my attention. Can’t a man stare at a pot plant for a minute without being judged?”

“You stopped talking mid-sentence,” Shuichi says, his brow furrowed. “Is something…. Wrong?”

Kokichi looks back to the pot plant. It’s plastic, unnaturally shiny, covered in ornamental pebbles instead of dirt. “Nah,” he decides. “I was just wondering what the point is. It’s so obviously fake, you know? Why even bother if it doesn’t look alive- that’s like, the whole point of pot plants.”

Shuichi blinks. “You think so?” He asks, and his voice has that tone of I’m-gonna-figure-Ouma-out that drives him crazy.

“Well, yeah. Pot plants are pets for people who can’t have pets. You know, I remember before I signed up for Danganronpa, I lived in an apartment full of hundreds of pot plants because I was so desperate for company.” He sighs dramatically, pressing a hand against his forehead. “Their life made my cold home feel less lonely.”

Shuichi frowns, and it’s cute, it truly is. “Why are you still lying?” He asks. “I thought…. You weren’t hiding things anymore.”

Kokichi laughs. He doesn’t mean to, honestly, but it slips out. “Force of habit,” he says, and it’s a little bit true. Lies with elements of truth are lazy and weak, but they’re kind of fun when they’re not believed at all, because that adds a new layer to the lying. “Besides, I’ve still got lots of secrets, Saihara-chan! Or are you implying you’ve got me all figured out already?”

To his surprise, Shuichi’s mouth quirks, into something like a smile, and he laughs softly. “No,” he says. “Not at all.”

\--

**Season 53 chat room:**

**Akamatsu:** Ok, I've just been informed by the staff that the party on Sunday is a go!

**Momota:** hell yeah! now we just need to figure out how to get some booze in.

**Iruma:** gonna brew some moonshine in my bath ^w^

**Akamatsu:** Guys!

**Akamatsu:** If you have to brew your own drugs, please at least don't talk about it in the highly monitored chat room?

**Iruma:** haha.... that was a joke......... jk....

**Saihara:** didn't we just have a party when we woke up?

**Momota:** that was a welcome party! this is a proper celebration party!

**Yumeno:** so we're going to sit around and play board games and set up a karaoke booth that only miu and kaede use?

**Yumeno:** sounds fuuuun.

**Hoshi:** i get depressed every time i open this chat

**Akamatsu:** We're doing our best....

**Gokuhara:** I am looking forward to it :D

**Iruma** went offline. 

**Momota:** ANYWAY LETS ALL TALK ABOUT DECORATIONS

**Momota:** GOKUHARA CAN BRING SOME BUGS OR SOMETHING

**Harukawa:** Subtle.

**Akamatsu:** thanks, Gonta! I'm sure it'll be fun :)

\--

Kokichi bumps into Shuichi while he's out grabbing a drink past curfew. The famed protagonist sits in the kitchen, staring at his monopad, his eyes heavy. A cold cup of tea sits next to him, utterly ignored as he watches the messages click in. Shuichi doesn't even look away from the screen when he walks in, when he grabs a cup and carries it to the sink. It's plastic, but it would probably still hurt if he bashed it over Shuichi's head, if he managed to split it apart and grab the shards and-

"That party sounds fun," he says, and he gets a cruel satisfaction from the way Shuichi slides a hand down his face, burdened by all those friends.

"It's going to be a disaster," he groans, still not looking up. "They can barely hold it together during meal times, and at least then there's a... table between everyone. A party's going to be so awkward."

Kokichi flips the tap, lets it run longer than necessary before sticking his cup under. "What was it like, when you first woke up?"

Shuichi's gaze unfixes but doesn't move, his pupils glazing over. Out of the game, he looks skinny and awkward. There are odd scars on his neck that were never put in the simulation. Sometimes Kokichi thinks his eyes look more yellow now, sometimes more grey. "I don't remember," he murmurs. "It's all a bit of a blur. I don't even remember waking up, I just remember seeing Kaede..." Now his gaze focuses again, back on the chat, where Girl Friday is probably sending something overly-kitschy about getting along and not holding grudges and remembering who to be angry at.

(Deep down, Kokichi feels an irrational shard of jealousy. It's stupid. He didn't even show up. If he wanted Shuichi to see him, he would've- should've gone. He has no interest in fighting for a scrawny, fake-detective's attention. Any kind of unnamed feelings he has for Shuichi are not only bad but also unwanted. He blames all his slip-ups on them- dirty, childish, lies.)

"You should tell her to stop looking after everyone," he says, and it surprises even him. He's genuinely not sure what it comes from- if it were still jealousy, he'd cop that, hate himself and tuck it away and hate Shuichi for making him so stupid, bandaging his fingers, holding out his hand- but it's... something else.  
Kaede always came to visit him, even when the circumstances of his death hadn't been broadcast and everyone still thought he was evil. She was nice to him, if bossy, and when his whole plan was unraveled for everyone to see how he failed, how he fucked up- she came to his hospital room and cried and cried and cried and said she thought they were a little similar. And she was right, in a way, though he hated to admit it. Kaede, who lied through her teeth, who put herself in charge of a rag-tag group of kids because no one else would, who was bolder than him and faster than him and prepared to kill in a way he couldn't quite manage, who had stepped up and lied in the first trial to save Shuichi- all of them, and then all her other lies had made sense as Kokichi stared at her and known she would have been an excellent ally, if things hadn't turned out the way they did.

He still hates her, though. He still thinks she's pathetic and her words are meaningless and her value on friendship is what got her killed and she still hasn't learned from it. But he says, "she's going to burn herself out."

Shuichi blinks up at him, tired and a little slow, his brain lagging behind. Kokichi would sneer but he doesn't think it would register.   
"Okay," Shuichi says, and then they don't say anything else.

\--

_“You won’t forget me, right?”_

_He looks up from the set of sign-up sheets. Across the crappy kitchen table, covered in burn marks and ink and stains, everything sits there. Everything, anxiously tapping its pen. The whole world -all the good parts, at least- bundled up into a package of scraped knees and stained eyes and a heavy, hopeless love._

_“...you know that we have to-”_

_“No, no. I mean…” Another heavy breath. “I just… if we get in there and you kill me, or you hate me, or you- whatever, it’s fine, I just. I just don’t think I could handle it if you didn’t notice me. If you just weren’t there anymore. And what if you c-came out of it and you decided you didn’t care or-”_

_He reaches across the table, takes those hands in his. The knuckles are all scraped up. The world around them will burn them to shreds if he gives it the chance- if their parents don’t get there first. “I promise. I’ll never- I’ll never be able to ignore you. No matter what. I was drawn to you before we even spoke, right?”_

_The stars in the sky nod, ducking their head. They laugh, soft and shaky. “Sorry. I’m just- jittery.”_

_“We don’t have to do this,” he says, even though it hurts to think of it, even though this is their best shot at a last smidgen of control over their lives. Even though he hungers for it, a little bit, the chance to tell a story. To be something, have purpose, even if it’s just for a week or a month and then it ends._

_“No.” The voice is determined, fingers lacing together, a little sly. “Besides, I heard Hayano in class three is applying, and if I pass up the chance to fucking murder her I’ll never forgive myself.”_

_He laughs, because how can he not, but they leave the forms set to the side, just for a moment._

_He wonders what it might be like, to live in a world where there was more than this. Danganronpa is their lives, just as much as each other, fucked up and gruesome and part of them, every death etched into their bones with a strange sort of envy. Is there any world, with more to offer them than this? He blames his parents, and his school, and his unfiltered access to the internet at a young age for his obsession with the morbid, but it's always possible he just came out broken.  
And then- **him,** broken too, leaking gold from every wound. They both watch for the mystery, the chase against the clock to solve it. The gore, violent and unsettling and splattered over the tv in a sick, unnatural shade of pink- something that advertises to the rest of the world the nonreality of it, the reassurance that these deaths aren't real. To them, that fake reality is twice as dangerous and three times as exciting. Punishment and atonement all wrapped up in a series of wires. The feeling of having your bones snapped, crunched, waking up with your prize money and hoping that'll sacrifices the dark parts of you. They're not stupid. Nobody walks away from Danganronpa happy. They come back fractured, nervous, jumping, they seclude themselves and look miserable but beautiful in interviews and they get murdered by fans or kill themselves years later or smoke themselves to death._

_But it's not like he's got anything better now. Anything except that show, flickering on the dingy tv screen, and him, just a foot away, too good, burning, brilliant. He shouldn't die- the idea of it makes his skin sweat and crawl- but he deserves a story, something to star in. When they put him on the screen, he's going to be beautiful- playing the game, too smart for them to program it away, dangerously ahead of the others. He'll be as safe as his out here, because he's anxious and clever in all the right ways, and he is- he is-_

_Takes a breath. Looks away from those quizzical eyes. Reminds himself that he can love but not touch, that this fragile friendship is the most important thing. That he's the most important thing. That loving him hurts and hurts and squeezes his heart up and juices it until blood and oxygen drip down, running through those bruised fingers._

_He doesn't sit up and lean over the table to kiss him, because they don't get nice things like that. They get blood and undying devotion and to follow each other to the ends of the world, but they don't get breakfast together or lazy kisses, or to hold hands for more than a moment. Just gross porn written by people three times their age and a special-self hatred to sink under their skin._

_Loves him, loves him, loves him, so much that there's nothing to do but lose him._


	2. as a result of forgetting,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You didn’t show up, so I don’t think it should matter to you either way,” she says. She looks tired. From upside down, the bags under her eyes look even heavier than usual. Nice, sweet Akamatsu, still trying to get through to him. 
> 
> “I know Shuichi would like it if you were there.”
> 
> The smile drops from his face. “I don’t care what Saihara-chan thinks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! just another warning that this chapter goes some pretty dark places and ends on a negative note. please take care!

Shuichi adjusts, slowly. He learns to hate himself in new and exciting ways and then bundle them up. He learns that nothing is real, not to trust either his memories or the thoughts in his head- and he learns to identify which ones are him, as he’s known himself, and which ones are some prior person seeping through (urges to scratch at his skin, addictions he didn’t know he had, a drive to go looking up gorey, miserable movies.) He learns to forget them, over the days, bury them deep and ignore his dreams and keep moving.

He can’t connect to the others- to the dead, to the dying. Some of them try to move on, some linger, all like ghosts, but they’re all making the best of it, and watching them continue, exist, live- it fucking aches. It aches. There aren’t even words for it. Sometimes he thinks he’s fine, and then he’s having breakfast with them and he’s on the edge of a breakdown, drowning above it.

Kaede is lovely, really, sweet and firm when she needs to be, and she almost gets it. Maki and Himiko, they almost get it, too. And Kaito, and every one who tried to make things better- even Kokichi, he thinks, almost gets it. But this pain, it’s-

“I don’t think anyone who wasn’t in my position will ever be able to fully understand it,” he explains to his therapist, because he really is trying to get better. He doesn’t want to feel like this anymore, wants to shed this awful, heavy guilt, the thing that’s throttling him, choking him dead. “It’s not just that I failed them. I feel- directly responsible for a lot of their deaths. I have nightmares about murdering them myself, and I- I’m jealous of them. I know it’s stupid, and they have their own traumas, I just-” And not for the first time, he has to squeeze his eyes shut and choke back tears. “I’m jealous. I wish I’d died with them. There’s this- this sense of exclusion, too, like I just- I’m different from them. They look at me like I’m different, like I don’t get it. And I don’t, but it still hurts.” 

And Shuichi is trying so fucking hard to make this work, and this is his second therapist, but this one doesn’t get it either. She’s a survivor herself, who went on to help people recently out of the killing games, but her game was fairly quick and she never had the weight of the responsibility Shuichi had on his shoulders.  
(He knows because he watched her game, some sick part of him hooked on it, sick like it had gorged itself on cake.)

She crosses her legs and makes a note on her chart. “Do you think it would be helpful for you to meet some other protagonists? There’s a support group, but... not many attend. Some new blood might help them- if you excuse the pun.” She gives him a smile like they’re in on it together, like it’s not still fresh. She’s always talking about making a comfortable environment for him, but it feels insensitive, the cheery curtains, the tub of fidget toys that he plays with anyway, like it’s mocking everything he went through a matter of days ago. 

“Kaede might like that,” he says, picking at the covering of his chair. He stopped using her last name as soon as he woke up. It seemed so- so stupid, niceities like that. He’s seen Kaede hanging by the neck, taking her last breath, crushed- he’s seen her driven to kill, sparing him on his own terror in the middle of a trial, forcing him to step up to something he couldn’t handle. He loved her, laying in bed after her death and loving the memory of a girl he barely knew- sister, friend, mother, lover, someone who was _there_ and who was bold and good. He hates her, sometimes, for leaving him alone. She’s too good to be true, to last- idolizing, angelic, hanging over his head. Every time they speak he’s terrified she’ll slip away, turn into something he doesn’t know, that all his faith in her will dissolve and he’ll be left with nothing. He wonders if she has the same sort of person lingering in her head that he does, awful desires and misery and self-pity. Kaede is good because she was written to be good. None of them are real.  
“I just don’t know if that’d be… helpful for me.” Shuichi’s too busy thinking he’s the worst to try and convince other people they aren’t. 

“What would be helpful?”

How is he supposed to know? He’s seventeen. (He’s a minor. How the fuck did they let this happen.) “Um, I don’t know. I guess it’s good just to talk about it.” It’s not. It fucking sucked. When did he start lying so much?  
He’s trying, trying harder than anything, because these feelings are going to kill him from the inside out, so he tries to direct it back to the truth. “I think I have this sense that I need to… atone, somehow. I don’t know how I would, but I think if I could make it up to the others, it would help.”

His therapist sets her pen down and looks over at him, kind and empathetic and meaningless. “Saihara-kun,” she says. She’s only a few years older than him. “You need to stop relying on others for your own comfort. That needs to come from within. Only when you are content, can you start forgiving yourself.”

Then what do I do? He wants to scream. What do I do to make it go away?

“You know nothing that happened was your fault.”

_I was complicit. I failed, time after time. Kaede made me think I had to try and support and lead the others, and all it did was distract me from the search for the mastermind as I let them tear each other apart. I never kept as close an eye on Kokichi as I should have. I let Kaito lie to me. I was too gentle, too harsh, too cowardly, too shy, I took too little action too late._

“Yeah.”

He leaves, with the frustrating sense that nothing had been accomplished, and he blames both of them. Her, for never picking up when he tries, for trying to make things seem more bearable than they are, trying to cheer him up when he’s nowhere near ready to be happy. Him, for not trying enough.  
The guilt sinks, heavier on his shoulders.

Shuichi steps out into the lobby of the therapy wing of the hospital, and blinks. “Ouma?”

Kokichi, sprawled over two chairs with his hair up in tiny bunches and tied with loom bands, throws up a peace sign. “Heyyy, Saihara-chan. Back to last names, are we?”

“Ah- sorry.” Shuichi does his best to put all that misery out of his mind, dragging a smile to his face. He learned a bit from Kokichi, he thinks- the right way to fake something is to think about something and exaggerated. He’s pleased to see Kokichi, so he smiles. He’s still sad, so he ignores that. “What are you doing here?”

Kokichi pretends to think about it, tapping a finger against his cheek and tilting his head so his soft hair floats everywhere. “Setting a bomb. I was planning on blowing the place, and I figured here was probably a pretty ironic place to start it.” Then he lifts his face to the ceiling and raises his voice to a shout, pointing at some imaginary camera. “Legally, that was a lie, Team Danganronpa! You shouldn’t have written a compulsive liar if you didn’t want to deal with this shit!”

“Um.” Shuichi can’t tell if he’s annoyed or amused. “Therapy, then?”

Kokichi rolls his head to the side, like looking at Shuichi staight-on is too much effort. “I have to go twice a week because I’m “high risk”,” he says, half-heartedly making airquotes.

“At least it’s not every day?” Shuichi says, lifting a shoulder like he thinks that’s any comfort at all. “I have to go once a day until they decide I’m safe.” It slips out before he can contain it, a bitterness that he’s used to keeping inside, sarcasm cutting his own words. “I think they think I’m going to try and destroy Danganronpa again- literally, this time.”

Kokichi looks surprised for just a moment, then he laughs. “Well, as your partner, I expect to know ahead of time if you do. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t tell me.”

“Promise,” Shuichi says, smiling despite himself. 

Kokichi looks like he wants to say more, but he’s interrupted by Shuichi’s therapist opening the door and sticking her head out. Shuichi is hit with a sudden streak of rage that is both concerning and surprising. “Ouma-kun, I’m ready for you- oh, Saihara! Nice to see you two chatting. I might bring you in together at some point?”

“Over my dead body,” Kokichi says, standing up and rolling his shoulders. He slips past Shuichi with his arms folded behind his head, glances back to grin at him, eyes dark. “Oh, wait.”

Shuichi has no time to respond before both Kokichi and his therapist disappear into the yellow hellhole that is their “safe space.”  
He’s left struggling to decide if he’s angry, or hurt, or amused. It’s not a good amusement, certainly. It’s bitter, twisted, words he can’t say that come out as breath or wry smiles, pain that’s too much to carry, too dramatic to do anything but laugh at.

\--

 _He is sitting on the roof of a school with someone, and he can’t see their face or think about them without static scratching at his temples, but he knows that he loves them, so much that it scares him._ _  
__He’s lying about something, something dumb, some story that doesn’t even matter, that he just wanted to make more exciting and ended up twisting more details onto, spinning something that got out of control and he’ll be forced to remember later._ _  
__And he knows they wouldn’t care if he just stopped and told them it was all bullshit, that it wouldn’t change the way their smile went soft in the sun, but he can’t make himself, he just keeps going, keeps filling up the gaps in his ribs with more words that don’t mean anything to him._

_Their figure comes in snapshots- the bruised jaw, the bandage on the back of their wrist that somehow he remembers that he put there, their eyes, smudged with blue color, the piercing in their nose. They are ethereal in the weak sunlight, their burned nails, the bangs he cut for them._

_He swings his legs off the side of the roof, sitting in the patch of wire that a girl cut through when she jumped and that the school never fixed. He wants to say something stupid, even stupider than what he’s already saying, wants to shut up, kick away from the building, pull away from that soft smile, too soft. It’s not safe to be soft, and they both know that, but he-_

_Canine. Bleeding. Blue. His heart pulses as he finishes the story with “that’s only a lie, though,” and they smile wider._

_Neither of them are good, but looking at them- him. He is the best thing. If he could have this, just this, if he could worm a little closer, life might not feel so heavy._ _  
__But he doesn’t get to keep things._

Kokichi wakes up pining for something he doesn’t remember. The dream, fragmented as it was, doesn’t stick around, and by the time he’s fully awake, he’s frustrated with the inability to grasp it. Throughout the day, it comes and goes- he’ll struggle to seek out the feelings, the one event, and all he’ll remember is that maybe he liked it? It was either exciting or painful, but it wasn’t a nightmare. And then he’ll be sitting in his room and picking at one of the puzzles they’ve given him, and he’ll think _I loved him so much._  
And then he’ll be so startled by the thought that it slips away again, and he’s left with the restless sense to pull it back, a flashback light held over his head. 

It’s probably nothing. It’s probably nothing at all. Still, the sense of forgetting haunts him all day, and he grows crankier and more fidgety the more it eludes him. 

“Hey, Ouma-”

His hand is around the doorknob to his room. He only went out because he wanted sugar, because whether or not it’s true, his instincts tell him that food is never a constant, and that you need to take it and hoard it, and he didn’t feel safe unless he had a stash of biscuits and soft drinks tucked under his bed. He still had a bottle left- he shouldn’t have gone out.  
Kokichi grits his teeth and tips his head back, forcing his mouth up into a smile. “Akamatsuuuuu,” he drawls. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She smiles at him, a little uncomfortably. She thinks he’s weird, and she’s not very good at hiding it. He smiles wider. “Um. I just wanted to check if you’d seen the messages in the chat about the party this weekend!”

“Huh?” He plays dumb, mouth open, eyes wide, presses a finger to his cheek. He’s practically hanging off the doorknob, staring at Akamatsu upside down and dopey. “I never check that thing!”

(He checks it all the time, because it makes him feel bad, bad, right down to his stomach, awful and rotten like an apple gone soft.) 

Akamatsu sighs, like she’s not surprised by his answer. “Right. I know you need time, but, well… we’ve decided to throw a party on the weekend, and I was wond-”

“Didn’t you just have one of those a few days ago?” He asks, just as innocently. He swings a little on the backs of his heels. If he moves around enough, the doorknob might pop right off, and then what will he do?

 _“You_ didn’t show up, so I don’t think it should matter to you either way,” she says. She looks tired. From upside down, the bags under her eyes look even heavier than usual. Nice, sweet Akamatsu, still trying to get through to him. 

“I know Shuichi would like it if you were there.”

The smile drops from his face. “I don’t care what Saihara-chan thinks.”

“But that’s not true,” she says, too softly, like she’s- sympathetic or something. Like she has any idea how he feels. “I know you want to be friends with him, and that’s okay. He’s a nice person, it’s okay to- to want that. To want to be close with someone.”

He almost laughs. It’s- so contrary to what he wants. He doesn’t want closeness, or kindness, or to be friends, the word cracked and unpleasant in his mind, awkward and boring. Friends, with Saihara? They’ve never even been close to friends, even it seemed like Shuichi was spending all his free time with Kokichi. It was just games. 

Akamatsu is still talking, hopeful and anxious, fidgeting with her fingers. “And I just- I think Shuichi’s a good person. For you. To be that. When- from what I saw, in the game, you seemed- you seemed more relaxed with him.

Shut up. Shut up.

“I’m an actor, Akamatsu,” Kokichi tells her, really hanging from the door now, his feet barely on the ground, bent so far backward that his voice comes out compressed and awkward. He laughs, and it struggles to get out of his chest. “Shuichi was the smartest person in the game and it took me a while to decide what to do with him. I don’t really need him around anymore.”

“Then why do you keep staring at him?”

Their eyes meet. Kokichi’s eyes are _violet,_ purple and grey all at once, dark on his face. One letter off violent. Kaede’s eyes are _plum_ , sweet and tart and open. If she dyed her hair and he grew a few more inches, they might almost match. He tips his head back, just a bit more, puts on one of his scarier masks- the ones used for emergencies, all malice and ill intent. She doesn’t blink. 

(In some other universe. Kokichi catches Kaede as she sets up her plan and convinces her that there’s no urgency. The show can’t kill all it’s participants so early on, so anticlimactically, such a waste of money. He promises not to tell Shuichi and they bond over this dark secret, the murder that almost was and still wasn’t. He holds it over her head, gets her to help him with Miu, uses her charm to sort out the student council while still protecting his own nefarious reputation, and when he’s dead and watching his trial play out, she stands up there and lies for him.)  
(And maybe, at some point, Shuichi started creeping into their planning sessions, never growing into a leader but staying distrustful, and they never mention the mastermind to the others but plot together, and when Kokichi dies, he dies knowing they’ll both miss him, thinking of Shuichi’s eyes with a melancholy that hurts even more than it did in this reality.)

“I’m not going to perform at your party, sorry,” he tells her. “But let me know how it goes! I’m expecting a total catastrophe, personally. Are you inviting Shinguji? Or just Iruma and Gokuhara? Ooh, no, you’re right, I should really get in there. That’s what those two need.”

“Ouma, I just-”

He swings off from the door, righting himself so quickly that it gives him bloodrush. “You just _what,_ sweet Akamatsu? Think we can all hold hands? Don’t make me laugh.” He laughs anyway. She looks so disappointed, worried for him, for the others, all the weight of the group on her shoulders. He’s trying to help her, really. “Sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate without adding me onto it.”

“You’re not just punishing yourself, you know,” she says, her voice tight like she’s holding something back- anger, or tears? Or something else entirely? Maybe she wants to laugh, too. “You’re hurting everyone when you act like this. Gonta’s really worried about you.”

And that’s his cue to leave. Kokichi finally twists the knob and slips inside, sticking his head out to grin at her. “Bold of you to assume I care, princess! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and off myself.” That was probably not the best thing to say. “Just kidding!”

Kokichi slams the door shut and waits until he hears her footsteps receding before he sinks down to the floor. He’s shaking, just a bit, hand coming up to rest on his shoulder. If he presses his fingers down just right, he can trigger a brief flash of pain- the memory of a shot there, the following shock. 

He curls his fingers. Pushes them down. Drops his head down, closes his eyes so it’s dark and crowded in his head.  
The resulting fear eats away at him, makes him tremble and hurt and hyperventilate. He keeps pressing, slumps backward and panics and shakes himself all over, and pretends he’s on the floor of the hangar again, staring up at Harukawa.  
“Why do you keep doing this?” She asks him, in that blood-red uniform, her hair still in twintails, a crossbow aimed between his eyes.

It’s not real, Kokichi thinks, and he trembles on the ground. “B-bored.”

The hatred in her face sharpens. She looks like she’s right there, watching the poison course through his veins. She planned to kill him. She wanted to. She might as well have. “This is getting pathetic.”

“What, that I-” a cough that isn’t real, because he’s not poisoned, not dying, “-that I keep imagining you killing me?”

“The others are too soft on you.”

“They are,” he agrees. He slips sideways, presses his cheek against the carpet floor. It feels cold and smooth. 

“You’re not redeemable. Even your own brain knows that.”

Kokichi nods, rubbing his cheek against the floor of the hangar. “Should’ve stayed down when I was kicked.”

She steps forward, draws the bow back. “Stop pitying yourself!” She screams. If this was real, people would have definitely heard that. It rings in his ears. “You hurt everything around you! You killed Miu, you killed Gonta, you killed Kaito!”

“He was dying anyway,” Kokichi mumbles, shutting his eyes against the floor. His brain is leaking out through his ears. He wonders what would happen if ghost Harukawa, not-real Harukawa killed him. Maybe his heart would just give out, like that. 

“We could have saved him!” She says, and it turns into a sob, tragic a way that assassin Harukawa never would have allowed herself to be. “Why did you hurt me so much?”

“It was mostly circumstantial,” he tries to explain to her, as the wound on his back bleeds out. “Kaito was dying, and convenient. You were lying. You were strong. I didn’t know you’d fallen in love with him… I did hate you, though,” he adds, slipping through the floor. His voice sounds muffled. “I did hate you.”

“Why?” He can’t see her from this angle, except he still can, juxtaposed with his own imagination and too corporeal. She’s crying now. “I was doing my _best!”_

“That’s why.” Kokichi opens his eyes, and he’s back in his bedroom, and Harukawa and her crossbow are gone. The air shifts, glitches. He feels sore all over. “I hate how you got to be loved.”

He’s talking to no one. He’s saying some really pathetic shit. This is some shit that soft Kokichi would say, to the effigy of Rantaro that he kept because he liked the reassuring air even the statue had, after coming back from hanging out with Shuichi and feeling dangerously tender and harsh all at once.  
His face is still pressed into the floor. He curls his fingers into the carpet, focuses on the anger that comes with the sappiness. It’s just as dangerous, another emotion he couldn’t afford, but it felt safer than being sad. “I hate you,” he mumbles. 

Nobody answers.

\--

**Season 53 chat room:**

**Iruma:** hey guys i thought we could take this quiz to learn a little more about each other

 **Amami:** this is a link to the bdsm test. 

**Iruma:** hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhwho oops

 **Chabashira:** Out. Out of the hospital.

 **Iruma:** you ddont have to take it!!!!!!! 

**Iruma:** i mean unless..

 **Hoshi:** i wish i had stayed dead.

\--

“Shuichi?” Another knock on the door. “It’s about, um, Danganronpa.”

Shuichi, sleeping on the floor, rolls over and throws an arm over his face. There is a worryingly compelling thought that says _guess we should just die now._ “I’m up,” he calls, pulling himself to his feet and stumbling over to the door. He opens it and stares down at Himiko, butterfly hairclip tucked into her bangs, a blue skirt that floats around her knees. He’s surprised to see her without either Chabashira or Angie, who she tends to be inseparable from nowadays- them or him and Maki. She doesn’t like being alone, and he can’t blame her. 

“You’re still wearing the same clothes as yesterday!” She accuses him, crossing her arms. “You’re even lazier than me, Shuichi!” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, smiling despite himself. “I fell asleep rearranging my books.” He keeps trying to change the way they sit on his shelves. All his favourites, and they look so unnatural. He tries them alphabetically, then by color. Neither worked, so he’s stacking them in order of his favourites now. That still doesn’t feel right, and he’d fallen asleep halfway through with the aching sense that it was always going to be left unfulfilled.

Himiko smiles at him, gentle, small, reaching her eyes in a sad, sleepy way, as she reaches for his arm. “Come on, we’ve got to go meet with Maki.”

Shuichi lets her lead him out, and they meet Maki in the foyer of their hospital wing (they call it a compound, but that’s what it is, really. A high-budget suicide ward.)  
Maki’s wearing jeans and a black shirt. Her hair is twirled in two low buns- she’s been considering cutting it, Shuichi remembers. She smiles, when she sees them, just briefly, and then her face is back to stone. “They’re waiting for us through there.” Motions her head over to the door at the front of the foyer- the only way out of this wing, that would lead you right through the business section of this particular Danganronpa office.  
Through the glass door, they can all see the hallway leading through- half black, half white.

Before too long, a woman comes through and greets them with bright smiles, gesturing behind her. “Oh good, you’re all ready. If you’d come with me?”  
Maki strides forward, and Himiko and Shuichi follow, all three of them moving in the world’s strangest funeral march. 

They’re directed into a sideroom, where a man sits waiting for them. He gives a name that Shuichi promptly forgets, introduces himself as a Danganronpa official, and congratulates them on getting through the game, all with a smile like he’s found himself the star of a surprise birthday.

“So why are we here?” Maki asks when he pauses, her voice cold. Cutting straight to business. Shuichi sends her a grateful look, watches her eyes flick to him and soften just a bit.

The official smiles over at them, holding out a set of files. “We’d like you to make your first performance a week from now.”

Shuichi takes the files, the girls leaning in over his shoulders. He feels weirdly numb.  
DANGANRONPA FINAL SEASON? The top one reads. The stars of Danganronpa’s 53rd season tell all! An all-exclusive interview will be broadcast next Friday, detailing the story of their dramatic season and the twist ending.  
He doesn’t read further. He feels sick.

Maki sits back, crossing her arms. “I’m not going to do this.”

“M-me neither,” Himiko says, pulling at her hair. Shuichi just tries to pass the folders back.

The man doesn’t take them. He tilts his head, false sympathy in his eyes. “That’s a shame. Do you not think you’re mentally stable enough to hold up?”

Shuichi thinks obviously not, but Maki bristles. “It’s none of your business. We just don’t want to.”

He sighs. “Well, if you don’t, unfortunately we’re going to have to move you into solitary- not as a punishment, of course, just to monitor your wellbeing. If you’re not feeling up to meeting the public, it could be a sign that you need further restrictions. For your own safety, of course.”

Shuichi grips the papers so tight they clench and crinkle in his hand. “That’s a blatant threat.”

“If you choose to take it that way, but I assure you, it’s all standard procedure.” The man’s smile is so fake. Shuichi feels a sudden violent urge grip him, one that he shoves away and buries deep, something that belongs to someone he used to be. He takes a breath.

“I- I don’t care,” Himiko says, lifting her chin. “I don’t care if you lock me up forever, I’m not doing what you want.”

Maki slumps into the couch, shoulders hunched, jaw set.

They all know what it’s like in solitary- it’s where Shinguji is, where Kokichi was, where Kaito ended up for a while. Constant monitoring, little freedom, the sense of creeping paranoia that makes strong, brave Kaito jumpy in the white halls of the compound they’re kept in. Danganronpa dangles freedom over their heads, the promise of prize money, of escaping this goddamned facility with their minds intact, and legally, if they don’t behave, they’ll be kept here forever. Shuichi’s read the contracts. There’s really nothing they can do.

Still, he nods along with his friends, letting the papers drop. “We’re not playing along anymore, Danganronpa.”

The man is quiet for a moment. “A shame,” he says, clasping his hands together and standing up. “I suppose I’ll have to ask the others, then.”

Shuichi blinks. “Wait, wh-”

“I suppose… Akamatsu, Momota, Chabashira… they’ll make a good trio, some of the most tragic deaths in the season.” The man unclasps his hands, claps them. He’s playing dirty. That’s a targeted threat- Chabashira for Himiko, Kaito for Maki, Kaede for him. Not just the people they love, but the deaths they feel responsible for.

“Don’t drag them into this!” Maki hisses, leaping to her feet. Quickly, Shuichi follows, placing a hand on her arm and feeling her flinch. 

Himiko gets up, too, bunching close to his side. She’s so tiny, but her face is like a flame when she looks at the official. “T-Tenko didn’t even make it halfway through! She’s got no reason to go up there!”

“It’s really out of my hands,” he says, false apologies in his voice. “We need someone to go up, so…”

“Okay!” Shuichi snaps. “I’ll go up.”

Maki grits her teeth. He can feel the muscles in her arm tense and untense. “Fine,” she bites out.

Himiko’s voice is still low. “I’ll curse you,” she mutters. “I’ll curse all of you.”

“Just as long as you don’t do it on camera,” the man laughs. “Your scripts have been provided there- just general things, feel free to ad-lib, but do follow the guidelines. Otherwise… well, it’s probably solitary and having your backups stepping in to cover.” He gives them all a white-toothed, winning smile, and bows. “Such a pleasure, ultimates. I’ll be seeing you soon- make sure you read those files!”  
And then he leaves, like they’ve already taken up too much of his time as it is. Shuichi’s blood is thudding in his ears, each heartbeat feels like a drop from a twelve-story building. It’s so loud that he thinks his temples might burst.

Himiko picks up the papers and turn them over. She reads them out, her small voice shaking in anger, and Shuichi closes his eyes.

_While you may talk about the experience however dramatically you like, you are required to also mention the care Danganronpa is offering to you. Your actions at the end were hasty and a result of shock. You acknowledge that your personalities were written by Team Danganronpa, and that your reactions were scripted, that Team Danganronpa is under no legal trouble, that you understand and regret your actions, that-_

“Fuck,” Shuichi says, pressing his knuckles to his forehead. “They can’t- they can’t just slip away from it all like that. I mean, Kaede would never agree to say any of it, and neither would Kaito- or Chabashira! So either they’re going to have to put up with it or lock up their entire cast and admit they fucked us up, and-”

“Kaito would say whatever they asked him to if he thought it would protect us,” Maki says, her voice low. She has her hands tucked in her pockets, the fabric bunched beneath them. 

Himiko bites her lip, fidgeting with the sides of the paper. “B-but… we can’t go out and say this. They- then they’ll just get to spin it however they want…”

“They’ll be able to do that anyway,” Maki says, not unkindly, but her anger barely concealed. “We destroyed their base. Their-” She cuts off, but they all know what she was talking about. _Kiibo._

“Are we really just… are we just going to do this?” Shuichi asks after the silence carries on too long. He knows the answer.

Maki turns her head away. Himiko tugs at her skirt. 

Shuichi’s leaving before he can process it- he’s already stood up when he realizes, and then he’s walking, pushing past staff to get back through that awful hallway, back to the compound.  
And then he’s knocking on Kaede’s door before he knows what he’s doing. It only fully registers when he hears her voice, the forced cheer in it, the melody under her words, and then he looks at the nameplate and his hand against the wood and he regrets it, instantly.

When she opens the door and sees him, her bright smile slips into something a little more real, and she pulls him into a hug, right there in the doorway. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.” Shuichi feels like he’s about to cry. But there’s no reason- he’s just tired. He’s so tired, but Kaede has been doing this for weeks now, probably taking charge as soon as the others started waking up. Kaede taught him how to step forward when he needed to, and she needs him now. He just presses his head into her hair and holds her tight. She fits against him like a glove, like a childhood friend. She smells of strawberry- fake strawberries, flavored body spray. “How- how’s it going?”

She tucks her head against his shoulder, and they just stand there. It’s nice. “Rantaro and I went out for a walk earlier this morning. There’s this pink camellia bush he’s been growing, and a flower bloomed today. It was really nice.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” A pause. “Amami-kun is really nice.”

“He is.” A sigh, and she lifts her head, looking up at him with kind eyes. Close up like this, he can see where she’s covered them with concealer. “I missed you a lot. When you were still in there. Rantaro is… he’s lovely. He’s so nice, and funny, and forgiving, and I’m so happy when I’m with him, but he’s not Shuichi.” She reaches up to squish his cheeks, laughing softly. “I guess I’m just really happy you’re out.”

His throat catches, aches. Shuichi pulls her hands from his face and smiles at her, and he- he can’t tell if he’s happy. He doesn’t know if he can feel anything but angry or hollow anymore. “I missed you, too.”

She laughs and moves away, holding her door open. “C’mon, come sit down. I’ve got some panta I smuggled before Ouma could get his grubby little paws on it.”

Shuichi smiles, following her in. Her room has white walls, yellow carpet, a pink bedspread. It’s neat but not clinical- he can see drawings pinned to the board above her desk, photos taped to the wall- her and Amami, her and Hoshi, Tojo, more and more survivors creeping through them. In those snapshots, everyone looks happy. Normal. Kaede’s like that- when you’re with her, you feel just a little more serene.  
There’s no piano here, but there are books and a set of speakers similar to Kokichi’s. Shuichi moves over and sits on the bed, and she sits next to him- him, with his legs over the side, and her, shuffling back and folding them, staring at him excitedly. Wearily. Her smile a little stretched, her eyes just a little slow to meet his. 

Shuichi wonders if he should leave- let her get some rest, recharge on her own, but he knows by now that that will only hurt her, if he lets her think for a second that she couldn’t be there for him. He resolves to make this casual and quick- a check in on her, not him. “How are things going… otherwise?”

Kaede tucks her hair back, laughing softly. “Well,” she says. “I’m getting permission for some more activities for the party, and I’ve got a list of movies and things, and my nurse says that if this week goes well, she’ll open up the gym, which will be really helpful for Hoshi and Momota and Chabashira-san, I think.”

This week, Shuichi thinks, and he thinks of the interview. They’re holding it above his head. He grits his teeth and resolves to follow their stupid script, hope that someone else out there will be able to fight for them. Because he can’t… he can’t fuck Kaede over like this. Not again.  
“I meant you,” he says softly, bumping his knee against hers. “How are you doing? I know the class-” they’re not a class. They’re a collection of patients. “I know the others have been rough.”

She bites her lip, looking at him, and then lets out a half laugh, half sigh, lowering her head, and something in her face changes and she looks so, so tired. “I could never get anything past you, could I?” Kaede’s hands fidget with the hem of her skirt, fussing with the smooth fabric. “I… I’m scared, Shuichi. We’re barely holding it together as it is, and now that you guys are awake, they’re talking about interviews and damage control and stuff, and- oh, please don’t look like that, it’s not your fault at all! Shuichi, I am so, so glad you’re here.” She reaches out to grab his hand in both of hers, squeezing it tight and looking at him almost pleadingly. “You did- amazingly. And you shouldn’t worry about this just yet, okay? Give yourself some time to recover first.”

Shuichi doesn’t move his hand, but he smiles at her. “I think the best way for me to recover would be for me to feel like I was helping you guys. Seriously, my therapist said so.” More or less. Sort of. 

Kaede still looks at him hesitantly before looking away, her face twisting. “I’m so sorry for dumping this on you so soon. I- I’m always making you clean up after me, aren’t I?”

“One mistake that wasn’t even your real fault doesn’t make an ‘always’, Kaede,” he says. 

She shrugs a shoulder, still staring away. He doesn’t know what to do with this, this- real person Kaede, someone who was alive the whole time he was pretending to be her, trying to live up to a memory. 

“You know…. You know you kept me alive,” he decides, speaking quietly. “The final trial…. That was all you, Kaede. It happened because of-”

“Stop it,” she says suddenly, sharply. “I’m not- I’m not some muse, Shuichi, I didn’t-” She shuts her eyes, tight. “I fucked up, and Shirogane got the better of me, and then you got the better of her. I wish- I wish- I wish I’d just killed him in the first place.”  
Her voice drops to a whisper, hovering in her throat, raspy as a girl choking for air. “I just want forgiveness, I can’t- everyone tells me to just move on from it, they have been since I first woke up, and I- I can’t. It doesn’t matter if the ball hit him, or if it was Shirogane, or if I smashed his head in m-myself, but he ended up dead and it was my fault. It was explicitly my fault. I killed Amami Rantaro and I wish people would just let me live with that!” She looks up suddenly, and there is nothing in her eyes but grief. “We aren’t in the killing game, Shuichi! There’s no blackened and innocent, there’s just the truth that your actions get people hurt! I’m a killer as much as Shirogane is, as much as Ouma, as much as-”

“Then live with it and know that you killed him thinking you were saving us!” He has to raise his voice over hers, struggle to get it out. “You killed him, Kaede! You killed him, and I killed you, and we didn’t have any other choice.”

She stares at him, and her pupils shrink, and all the anger in her body seems to fall away from her at once. “Y-you didn’t-”

“I did,” he says quietly. “Let’s just- let’s just keep that, okay?” He tries to laugh, but it comes out like a sniffle. “One kill between us.”

Kaede stares. And then she gets up and paces over her neat carpet and pulls at her hair. “Hhhhhhhh,” she says, eloquently. “I hate this. I hate you. Why did you let me do that?”

“Why did you make me accuse you?” He doesn’t know why they’re arguing.

“I wanted to help-”

“No, you just couldn’t say it, so you made _me_ -”

“I can’t do this.” She squeezes her eyes shut and pulls at her hair. “Sh- Saihara, I- I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll text you in a bit. But I- I need to be alone for a bit.”

Shuichi, sitting on her bed, stares up at her, and he wants to take it all back. Wants to insult her again. Wants her to tell him how much he fucked up.  
He stands. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

Shuichi leaves Kaede’s room and she’s still pacing, rubbing at her throat. He leaves her room and tries not to slam the door and hates himself so fiercely that he needs someone else to hate him, too.

And then he sees Kokichi.

\--

Kokichi is out, after spending several hours lying on his floor and pretending to die. He wonders, ruefully, what the people watching the security cameras thought of him. Considering no one's come to grab him and drag him to solitary again, they clearly don't think he's actually capable of killing himself, which is bold on their part. Even if he didn't have the whole guilt and suicidal impulses and life just being shit in general, Kokichi is the exact kind of petty bitch who would kill himself to spite someone. (He's already done it, sort of.)

Of course, the world hates him, because right when he's heading back from the kitchens after having drunk enough water to feel sort of alive again, he spots Shuichi, stepping out of Akamatsu's room. He freezes up, trying to avoid his eye, hoping he'll just keep walking- he looks too miserable to notice him, hopefully.

“Hey.” Saihara's voice is soft, the greeting barely there. Kokichi could ignore it, should ignore it, let it melt into the cold, compound halls.

Kokichi muffles a curse inside his own mouth, swallows it back down. He really doesn't want to see Shuichi right now. "Hey, Saihara-chaaaan." He smiles anyway, lets the name drip from his tongue. "Slipping out after a sordid affair, huh?" Shuichi's face twists, like that hit a little too close to home. Kokichi raises an eyebrow, unsure why his stomach twists at the thought of it. "Didn't go so well, huh?"

"Please don't," Shuichi says, but it's not a joke, not even a real protest, it's just... there. He moves away from Akamatsu's room, hands sticking in the pockets of his worn-out jeans. He looks awkward and miserable. "I- it's not like that."

"Of course not," Kokichi agrees. "Akamatsu is too out of your league."

Shuichi nods, fidgeting with his pockets. He starts walking, like that's all, like that's it. It's so easy for him to look away from Kokichi. He's probably thinking about pretty Akamatsu, nice Akamatsu, kind Akamatsu with the endless patience, who hurts so much and keeps going anyway. Or maybe he's thinking about Momota, foolish and loud and brave and good as anything, or Harukawa, and her red eyes and her cruelty and god, Kokichi still does not understand how people like her.

"Did she finally dump you?"

Shuichi stops walking, and he turns around, and he looks- frustrated, tense. "It's none of your business."

Kokichi sways back on his heels. "So.. yes?" He puts on one of his favourite smiles, the childish, smirking one that never fails to piss people off.

Shuichi's eyes flash, and he opens his mouth, and Kokichi knows that whatever comes out next is going to hurt, and he regrets everything-  
and then Shuichi closes his eyes and turns away. "Goodnight, Ouma."

Last name. Cold. No honorific, either. Part of him is relieved. The other part, the, unfortunately, more compelling part, is scrabbling, its little demon claws hooked into his chest as it climbs over his ribs, scratches at his muscles, searches for a way out. "Did you take my advice?" he asks, and it comes out sly and soft all at once. "Tell her to calm down?"

Shuichi's eyes move back to his. Kokichi is suspended there, in the connection between them. "I tried."

"Is that what she kicked you out over?" Is that why you look so down?

Shuichi shrugs a shoulder, minutely. "Maybe. I think... we're all struggling right now."

Kokichi snorts. "No shit, Sherlock, thanks."

The fake detective's brow furrows. "Why are you talking to me if you don't care about the conversation?"

"Huh?" Kokichi swings back on his feet again, like he's swinging off his doorknob, staring down tired Akamatsu. "Maybe I wanted to stare at your pretty face for a while. Maybe I just wanted to bother you. Who knows?"

"You do," Shuichi points out, his voice growing more and more clipped. "You know, Kokichi. Would it kill you to be straightforward for once?"

"It might," Kokichi says, widening his eyes. "I've never tried before."

“Christ, Kokichi, don’t you care about anything?”

Care. the word is bitter in his mouth. He doesn’t know if he can care.

“Not really?” He shrugs. Shuichi is so _angry,_ all this frustration tucked behind his eyes, burning like he’s never seen, and it’s kind of exhilarating. The part of Kokichi that remembers swiping his fingers over candles reaches out, makes him grin, casual and cruel. “I mean, why should I? It’s not like any of this is real.”

Shuichi’s struggling for words- or composure, maybe, one hand twisted in his hair. “But we can make it real. We’re- we’re not free, sure, but we’ve got opportunities. We’ll have more. You’re not even trying, Kokichi. What happened to the guy who planned for everything?”

“He died, Shuichi.” The grin drops away before he can pick it up, but he doesn’t even want to. Shuichi isn’t meant to be like this. He’s not meant to be stupid. “You know that, right? We might be here, right, but those people we were- they were built for the killing game. We’re not in it anymore, and we’ve got old thoughts and memories creeping back, and those people- those people died with the game. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to enjoy yourself.” He sniffs, wrapping one arm around the other. “Well, close enough.”

Shuichi freezes up, looking terrified. Kokichi is sympathetic, he really is. The person Shuichi was, the one that everyone saw begging to be part of the game, he was really pathetic. That doesn’t mean that Shuichi has to be him now, though. Kokichi’s certainly not whoever signed up, whoever keeps making his fingers twitch and bigger, darker lies flit through his head. 

"It's okay," Kokichi tells him. "You're just as bad as the rest of us. Although that might be a bit of a shock for a protagonist like you."

"Don't-" Shuichi says suddenly, and he's almost snarling, his eyes gleaming, his face all tight. "Don't you- don't say that about me."

Kokichi pushes up on his tiptoes- they're not quite eye to eye, but it usually gets him somewhere, especially with Shuichi who's always shrinking away from other people's eyes, but right now, Shuichi has his shoulders back and is straight and tall and _looking down on him,_ and Kokichi hates it. He snarls right back, smiling like a wild dog. "Why not?" He asks. "Afraid you're not living up to it?"

"You know what?" Shuichi says. "I don't know why I ever bothered with you. You might make big, grand plans and think you're smarter than everyone just because you're not afraid to manipulate people, but you're the biggest coward here."

"Oh, that's rich." Kokichi almost splutters over his own laugh. "Mister shy and frightened shrinking violet is calling me a coward? At least call me evil or something, Shuichi, please, it's not nearly so hypocritical."

Shuichi scoffs. "But you're not evil," he says, and each word cuts at his skin, curls around him like vines, barbed and thorned and poisoned. "You're just too frightened to be good. I bet you sat in bed with your- fucking horse mask, and your pinboard, and your weird keepsakes, and you felt just as scared as the rest of us-"

"You don't- you have no clue what I sacrificed!" Kokichi spits at him, and he thinks of DICE, of ten, smiling clowns, faces he thought he was leaving behind, a family with no one to lead them, all the people he would never see again, his own-

"What, other people's lives?"

Kokichi is drawn up short. Shuichi just keeps staring at him, and his eyes are cold.

Kokichi laughs. It's short, and sharp, and cruel. "Wow," he says. He's almost about to start applauding, like a villain in an old movie. "You know what, Shuichi? Momota blew a lot of hot air at me. But you? For all your cowardice, at least you're accurate when you finally decide to do something. Although," he pauses to twirl his own hair, playing at being bold. "It's a little late, don't you think? Just like everything else you've done."

Kokichi's good at finding insecurities. From the way Shuichi gapes, he's right on the mark- but he already knew that. He smirks, ignores how cold his chest feels. 

Shuichi draws back, and he's not looking down on him anymore, he's hunched up, desperate. "I guess it's good that DICE aren't real," he starts, and Kokichi's heart drops through his stomach.

"Don't," he hisses. "Saihara, if you dare-"

And Shuichi doesn't. He goes quiet, and he stares at Kokichi, and Kokichi stares at him, and he hates him, hates him, hates him, like he hates Harukawa, like he hates Akamatsu, a hundred times worse and better all at once.  
(Five hundred years ago, they're sitting in the library and Kokichi, a bandage still around his finger, laughs at something Shuichi says. They're not friends, because Kokichi is bitter and disdainful and cruel, and in trials they are always fighting each other, even when they're on the same side. But when Shuichi smiles at him, looking pleased and proud of his own joke, Kokichi wants to keep it forever.)

They both knew what he was going to say. 

"I'm going to my room," says Shuichi, suddenly. "I can't do this..." and then he trails off, shakes his head, curls up his hands.

"Fine!" Kokichi says. It's not his fault. He was trying to avoid Shuichi, sneaking out of his girlfriend's room. It's not his fault that their something-like-an-allyship is over now. 

Neither of them move. They just stay there, not looking at each other, no longer angry but bitter, their words still hanging in the air between them.  
Kokichi wants to go, but his legs don't work. 

They stay there, staring at different parts of the walls, until they hear footsteps down the hall and both decide to scarper at once, running in different directions like cockroaches. 

_(Ten thousand years ago, two boys have their first fight over a bruise on the older one's cheek, and they go home to empty, angry houses, and they curl up and cry.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing part of the dialogue in this: hehehehehehehe foreshadowing (it's not what you think, im sure. its very subtle :)
> 
> i am going to post this, and then i am going to give my wrist a break and watch tiktoks, and then im gonna finish the werewolf fic.... which will take me a while, so dont hold your breath! but it should be out tomorrow? tonight? who knows! 
> 
> also im sorry this is sad :( i promise next chapter gets a little easier. thank you so much for all your sweet comments and support, you really make me so happy <3


	3. as a result of acquiring,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Welcome, all three of you! I have to say, after such an…. Explosive end of season, we weren’t sure if we’d all be seeing you again! But I hear you all were happy to be interviewed- to clear some things up, is that right?”
> 
> You motherfuckers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so hey this animatic? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrJTLhD6fss&list=LLJ_u261GWEWVZ4blNLIT39w&index=28) fuck that. fuck that it made me SO SAD and then i had it on loop for the song and i kept clicking back to the tab and every single time i would see a frame that just WRECKED me. literally im so angry. hey how am i supposed to stop writing shuichi and kokichi fighting to go queue a new song and see frame 2.22???? hey op?? hey????? hey??????????  
> anyway catch me crying over that fuckin song and the art and the fucking storyline im so MAD i just want them to be HAPPY rrrrrhgghhrhrhh

_Someone is holding him close, and the comfort is laced with danger, the worry that they’ll be seen, and he knows they’re alone, knows no one will be home for another two hours, but he still can’t help but worry. He’s crying, not sure about what, but he’s sobbing in a way that he hates, that makes him feel far too vulnerable._ _  
__“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” he keeps saying, little lies spilling out of his mouth, half-stories that go nowhere, distractions from how stupid and vulnerable he is. Did you see what Hayano did, she finally lost it and slapped me today, lie, when i was going to school i saw (a name that he can’t remember even as he says it) and he was drinking, slamming beer at 6 am, lie, i hate you, let me go, you’re pathetic, lie, lie, lie._

_They hold him tighter, but they sniff, and he knows his words hurt them as much as he knows he can’t just stop, that every instinct tells him to push further, shove him away so he can’t see him, can’t know him-_

_“I don’t- I don’t know why I’m like this,” he sobs, and that’s not a lie. His emotions don’t work properly, don’t keep him stable. He doesn’t want to lie, (even though he does, as he is now, and for a moment the memory clenches and wobbles as he grows too close to lucidity) but they just keep coming out, frantic and hopeless. He just wants to distract himself, doesn’t want to be here, his mind flickering out of his control._

_“It’s okay,” the other person says, hugging him closer. “It’s not your fault. It’ll pass. You’ll feel better soon, right?”_

_He knows it’s true. It’ll pass. It just never feels like it at the time. He’s toxic, forcing them to look after him like this. Manipulative. Broken. Awful._

_He can’t stop hurting him. He wishes he could._

It goes like this. 

Kokichi wakes up, and he doesn’t think about Shuichi, and he doesn’t think about Akamatsu’s recent tension. He thinks about his weird dreams, and how angry it makes him to be forced to remember bits and pieces of things that don’t make sense, and then he thinks about how much he hates the person who signed up for this fucking show, and then he thinks about DICE.  
On loop, constant, going over all his favourite memories, because when they fade away they’ll be gone forever. When they sprayed their names all over the sign above the police station, when they ran down the streets, laughing and curving corners, piling up into a van and crashing into each other, cackling like ghosts in the night. Tea time for ten. Paper crowns, overly dramatic speeches. Running away for the first time, falling asleep on the floor of an empty warehouse, piled up for warmth. Giving each other nicknames and living by them, dying their hair and bunching it up, pulling on masks and helping each other and always coming back to each other and staying close and true, and feeling undefeatable and good and-

_I guess it’s good that DICE aren’t real. Because they would be so, so fucking ashamed of you._

They both knew what Shuichi was going to say, and it’s why neither of them reach out, why Shuichi’s eyes dart away from his. Or maybe that’s because of what Kokichi did say, all the things he knew would cut deepest. It’s probably unfair of him, to not expect Shuichi to bite back, to aim for Kokichi’s weak spots like he had done for him, but it just- it doesn’t feel the same. Shuichi wears his insecurities on his sleeve, unease written all over his face, like he’s just- there, ready to be slapped or comforted. Kokichi’s are private, and that- that should be respected. What the fuck does Shuichi know of DICE? Just a stupid video about them. Just a picture by Kokichi’s bed. He doesn’t know anything.

He’s right.

Kokichi goes out to get food, and he doesn’t think about how Shuichi and Akamatsu won’t look at each other. He doesn’t go to Akamatsu’s party, and he meets Shuichi in the hallway as they both walk to get water, and then they walk in silence and they _burn._  
They walk side by side in silence, and Shuichi lets him go first to the tap, and Kokichi fills up his glass and stares at the wall. He can hear the sound of pop music floating away from the rec room, where the others are all gathered, trying to make things okay, and Shuichi looks like he wants to say something but he doesn’t.  
Kokichi finishes and steps aside so he can reach the sink, and he downs the entire glass in the kitchen right there, and he’s not sure why. Maybe to prolong this, like pushing at a toothache, eyes closed as he drinks, and Shuichi holds his glass under the too-slow tap, the shitty plumbing in the shitty fake-hospital. The water drips through his head, behind his eyes, soaking his brain, and he is floating, weak, endless. He hears someone shouting along with the song, bass humming through the walls, and he wonders if any of them are actually enjoying themselves. 

He sets the glass down so quickly that he wonders if it splintered a little. Shuichi jumps, sloshing water all over his wrists, soaking his grey hoodie black, and some alien urge makes Kokichi want to push him up against the counter and pull at that fabric, and- punch him? Stare at him? Dig his nails against his hands?  
(Kokichi’s known, even before he started having weird dream/memories of loving another boy, that he wants… things. And he doesn’t want them, all at once. Kokichi’s eyes linger a little too long on bones- shoulders, necks, fingers folded up. Part of him wasn’t lying when he said he liked Shuichi. He knows all this, knows that he wants Shuichi in ways that are truly awful, things Shuichi would never do, would never say. Kokichi is exactly the sort of filthy little queer Iruma joked about him being- but he doesn’t think about that.)

Kokichi leaves before Shuichi can find those words he wants to say, and he is stupidly, irrationally sad about everything. Not hurt- hurt is a familiar emotion, one that can be useful, human, instinctual, so hard to avoid that he’s just used to living with it. He’s sad, like a girl who didn’t get to go to prom, like a boy who disappointed his parents. He’s sad, fucking sad that Shuichi said it, that nobody else would have, that ever since he woke up, he can’t put his own feelings away like he could in the simulation.

Dying might have been more traumatic than he thought it was. Or maybe it was everything that happened afterward that ruined him.

He goes back to bed and he curls up with his eyes open and he puts on the same song as before, to tune out all the pop music still echoing through the facility. He listens to it, and dreams with his eyes open. Shuichi knocking out his teeth. Shuichi telling him how much he failed. Shuichi hunting him down. Shuichi, standing across from him in the trials, brow furrowed, momentarily distracted by how much he wanted to figure Kokichi out. Shuichi, next to him in that obviously fake, morphenomenal trial ground. Their shoulders brushing in the library. Shuichi, bandaging his finger. Shuichi’s teeth on his mouth. Kokichi pressing him into the sink. Shuichi shoving him against the fridge. Kokichi’s hands on those wet wrists. Shuichi’s, yanking his hair back. Shuichi spitting in his face. Shuichi kissing him, tender. Shuichi kicking him in the side, shooting him with that crossbow, setting down that infernal press. Shuichi, eyes soft and loving. Shuichi, face dripping with blood and guts and smiling.

It’s not fair, Kokichi thinks, that stupid irrational feelings like this stick around even when he doesn’t want them to. Why can’t humans control their own emotions? What’s the point, when all they do is irritate you?

Three more days pass, and he doesn’t see Shuichi again, and that’s enough to make his emotions, bubbling and melting, simmer down and rage harder all at once. Kokichi’s lucky enough to have many different traumas to not think about. He goes to therapy and lies his way through, as per usual, and his therapist sighs and makes a note about ‘recovered memories may be affecting him’ which is a joke, because Kokichi can’t actually properly remember the memories- just the frustrating cocktail of emotions they leave him with. Part of him is a little concerned they’re going to try and memory wipe him again. The other part would be relieved, frankly. 

Then Akamatsu knocks on his door.

Kokichi, who has not changed since that fateful meeting in the kitchen, stares up at her from his bed, unimpressed and cranky. He assumes she wants his music turned down (still the same song, sweet and sad. Aching through his speakers.)

Akamatsu winces a little at the volume, but she closes the door behind her. “You look awful,” she calls over the music.

Kokichi touches his face. His hand comes back sticky and gross. “Yeah,” he agrees. He thinks he’s sweat off most of his makeup by now, and he’s got some pimples forming over his forehead, he can just tell. “Not as bad as you, though.”

It’s a lie, of course, because Akamatsu is as neat as always- but it still seems to shake her, and she looks genuinely worried for a moment. Pathetic. “O-Ouma.” She reaches up, pulls at a bunch of hair. She must be pretty shaken by the fight with Shuichi, huh? (he assumes that’s what happened. The two of them figured out that they don’t get on quite so well when they’re faced with real life, the separation of life and death still splitting them apart.)

“That’s my name,” he drawls. “So they tell me, at least.”

She stiffens a little, but pulls her hands from her hair. “You- you haven’t been out in a while.”

“I’m not the most social character, Akamatsu. In fact, I think we’ve had this exact conversation before.” He tips his head back to the pillows and goes back to what he was doing before she interrupted him- staring at the roof and thinking about death. It’s terribly cliche, really, but he didn’t write himself. Shirogane did.

“No, I mean- you haven’t even been coming out for food,” she says quietly. “Not even at night. I asked the nurses.”

Kokichi has a stash, but that’s not the important thing right now. He sits up, looks over at Akamatsu. “Huh. I didn’t realize you were quite so buddy-buddy with the Danganronpa staff now.”

Immediately, three stages of grief cross her face- she settles in anger, her voice low. “Ouma, I would have thought you would understand the concept of picking your battles.” It’s decent advice, but it comes out tangled, muddied, barely concealed hatred- for him, for them, for herself? “If I don’t see you for four days, yeah, I’m going to go and ask, okay? God knows I couldn’t count on them coming to me.”

“Right, right,” he nods. “It’s my fault for making you talk to them. I’m so sorry, Akamatsu.”

Her chest heaves, like she’s struggling with the breath in her lungs. “Kokichi.”

“Ooh, awfully personal! Are we best friends now? Are you replacing Shuichi after your fight?”

She blanches. “How did you-”

Kokichi snorts, folding his arms behind his head and leaning back against the headboard. “You’re not exactly subtle. One day, you’re glued at the hip. Now you can’t even look at each other.”

“You haven’t even come out of your room in days! How would you know-”

“I had to go to therapy.”

“Oh, sure.” She snorts. “And I’m sure you made the most of that.”

“Blame Shirogane! She wrote me like this.” He smirks at the flinch that earns him, the way Akamatsu’s hands come up to her throat. It’s such an obvious gesture, a weak point ready to pull at, and she seems barely aware that she’s doing it.

“I just-” She closes her eyes. “Okay. I’m sorry. I know you’re having a hard time.”

“You’re so nice to me,” he purrs. “So forgiving.”

“We’re watching the interview in the lounge today!” Akamatsu says, the words clipped. “I know you liked- well, I know you came to watch the episodes, so I thought?”

Kokichi blinks. He drops his arms from behind his head, pushes himself up. “Wait, what interview?”

Akamatsu stares at him. “The interview? God, have you not even-” She bites her own lip, hard, like a punishment, and when she speaks again, her voice is gentle. “Harukawa-san, Yumeno-san, and Sh- Shuichi are being interviewed today. They’ve already left to get ready, and the whole thing is being live streamed. We all thought we’d go and watch.”

“When… when was this planned?”

Akamatsu’s gaze shifts. “I don’t know,” she says, but she’s lying. “They didn’t say anything about it until today.”

Kokichi thinks back to the fight, to Shuichi coming out of Akamatsu’s room, already angry. He knows, too. 

They stare at each other for a bit, and Akamatsu lowers her head. “Look,” she says. “I- Shuichi and I- we had. I said something really awful to him. And he- he was stressed-”

“He can be pretty cruel when he tries to be,” Kokichi says, like he doesn’t care, twirling a strand of hair between his thumb and forefinger. He should dye his ends again. 

Akamatsu blinks, like she doesn’t want to agree. “Shuichi was already stressed,” she repeats. “And he was trying, and I-” She lets out a breath. “I just. He’ll probably be really unhappy when he gets back, and he’ll probably try and seclude himself, so-”

“My god, Akamatsu, tell me you don’t want me to go comfort him.”

“No!” She looks so surprised by her own response that Kokichi snickers. She turns pink. “I mean- Momota’s going. You can too, I just… didn’t think that you would like to.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” he agrees. “I’m not a very comforting person.”

“I’m sure you could be,” Akamatsu says, like she’s trying to cheer him up, like Kokichi has any desire to comfort these idiots. “Um, anyway. I was more wondering if… you could just? Come out a bit? He worries about you, so-”

“Saihara doesn’t worry about me,” Kokichi interrupts her, because that’s a fucking insane statement. 

Akamatsu stares at him. “I haven’t been talking to him and I’ve still noticed him staring at your door lately,” she says, like it’s an obvious statement.

Kokichi shifts uncomfortably, pulling at his hair. Shuichi was probably feeling guilty. That’s not a surprise, he’s very good at feeling guilty. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t.

“I’ll come out at dinner,” he mumbles, just to end the conversation. “But I’m not going to be all buddy-buddy with everyone, Akamatsu. And I’m not going to watch a bullshit interview that’s probably all scripted, anyway.”

“That’s- no, that’s great.” It’s like he’s taken fifty pounds off her shoulders, Atlas letting the world roll into a slightly more comfortable stance. Akamatsu’s face brightens, and Kokichi idly notes how pretty she is when she smiles- he gets why the others like her so much. They’re all shallow enough to be taken in by a smile like that, genuine and deep and like a rose on her face. He wonders that, if things were different, if he weren’t fucked down to the core, he might have obsessed over Akamatsu like he obsesses over Shuichi. “Thank you, Ouma.”

He waves her off, and she practically skips out, and Kokichi feels hollow and awful for not connecting with that smile at all, for not caring about the others. 

When he’s certain that she’s gone, he drags his Monopad out from under his pillow. They can all access the internet, but can’t make accounts or leave comments on anything. It’s sick, really, a window to the outside world that goes one way only.  
He types in _Danganronpa interview today_ and the first link flashes pink when he presses it. 

\--

Shuichi fidgets with his tie for the thirtieth time in the last minute. They’re in the Danganronpa headquarters next door- too dangerous to take them out, he guesses, and he can’t tell if he’s comforted or frustrated being just a building away from the compound. They gave them all a good breakfast that morning, luxury food that tasted like dirt, accompanied by pills for managing anxiety that they all swallowed and quietly wondered if they would reprogram them- again. All three of them sit in their uniforms again- minor differences made, like an anime character’s upgaded form. Maki’s hair has been done professionally, the long pigtails trapped around red roses before they drape down again, her skirt shorter, garters around her long legs, another silver charm in her hair, overly-shiny jewelery pinned to her shirt. Himiko has a cape now, gold embroidered around her sleeves, her tie replaced for a bow, stars stitched to her hat, her hair curled just slightly, soft and dark red. Shuichi got chains hooked around his cufflinks, his hair gelled into something more dramatic that leaves his face clear- someone spent what felt like an eternity dusting his eyes with different shades of grey. They look bruised now, familiar in a way he can’t place. Haunted. His skin is powdered even paler, and for a moment he thinks of Kokichi and his white cheeks before he pushes the thought aside. 

They’re sitting on three round stools, plush leather and comfortable, with another nearby, waiting for the host. In front of them, people bustle around adjusting cameras and recording equipment, barking orders at interns who stare at them with wide eyes.  
Shuichi is on the verge of a panic attack, and the others aren’t helping- not that he blames them, of course, but. Himiko’s gripping her hairclip in her hand (He’d learned, that day, that it had been a gift from Tenko, made from a plastic jewelery kit they’d found in the rec room. It didn’t match her new outfit, though, so they took it out and Himiko had stared at the makeup artist with an amount of hatred that was truly unsettling to see on her small face.) Her whole body is tensed up, her shoulders hunched, her hands folded in her lap, gripping the hairclip tight as anything. Maki is even worse- she’s said nothing since they were sat down, her knees pressed together like a clamp, her arms crossed, back ramrod straight. Usually, her presence is comforting- in an awful way, he feels like she could protect them from the people around them, knows that she would at least try. But he’s just a little too far gone today, and he only feeds off her tension, drawing himself up tighter the more he looks at the set of her jaw, Himiko’s eyes on the floor. 

A woman walks in- young, pretty, dark-haired and full of smiles. She takes a seat across from them and greets them with bright smiles and a reassurance that “today’s going to be a lot of fun, nothing major,” and then she’s swarmed by makeup artists before Shuichi can throw up over her nice skirt.  
Everything passes in a blur- more people come and touch his face, his hair, he nods through the sound and readiness checks, and then the doors open and people start streaming in, sitting in the rows of chairs that circle the stage and whispering, murmuring, chattering, and then all of a sudden the projector ahead of them is set up and the background of Monokuma’s is lit up, and someone is saying “ready? Okay, three, two one-”

A familiar sound plays, a jingle that makes Shuichi’s stomach clench, his hands grip the chair, his eyes look over to Maki and Himiko who are even more grim, and then it’s pink, yellow, bright green and blue, neon lights flashing over them as the announcer spreads out her arm and says, “And welcome to the Danganronpa stream! With me today are our latest stars, out of recovery and doing just fine! Welcome, Yumeno Himiko, Harukawa Maki, and our very own Saihara Shuichi!”

The projector behind the cameras, over the audience, blinks WAVE, and Shuichi obeys, Himiko giving just a twitch of the fingers and Maki very stiffly raising her arm. Then it says ENTHUSIASTIC, and Shuichi thinks of Kaede’s tired face as he forces his lips into a smile.

“Welcome, all three of you! I have to say, after such an…. Explosive end of season, we weren’t sure if we’d all be seeing you again! But I hear you all were happy to be interviewed- to clear some things up, is that right?”

 _You motherfuckers._ Shuichi glances at his companions, the sign that says nod, and they all do, like bobble heads. 

The announcer’s good at her job, won’t let the silence stretch on too long. “That’s so great! We’re delighted to have you, really. Now, do you mind if I ask how your friends are doing?”

Shuichi knows this one. Neither Himiko nor Maki look ready to speak, so he thinks of Kaede and clears his throat, reciting the script verbatim. “All our companions are recovering fine. Physically.” Not quite verbatim. 

“That must be pretty relieving, huh?” The woman smiles, her mouth pink and shiny. “Finding they were all alive after all. What was it like, waking up?”

They look at each other. Shuichi doesn’t remember. He’d been in too much shock- literally, he couldn’t process what was happening until he’d been dumped into the middle of a party and was hugging Kaede like he’d- well. Like she’d come back to life. Eventually, Maki speaks, her voice low and quiet. “It was a confusing experience. I didn’t quite believe it at first.”

“It took some time to adjust, right? But your friends seem to have done well! I actually have a note here from your Akamatsu-chan!” The announcer reaches into the inside of her cute, white jacket, and Shuichi flashes back to Kokichi flipping out a knife. “She says- first of all, that she hopes you’re handling the cameras okay, Saihara!” Laughter bubbles around the studio audience. The announcer smiles, holding out the note- cute pink stationary, leaning around it to look at him. “Are you doing okay?”

Shuichi forces his mouth into another smile. “Just peachy,” he grits out. He wonders what they bribed Kaede with for this note- if it’s from her in the first place. Maybe they told her they’d open up the gym for it, or put in some new games for the rec room. Maybe she just wanted to offer him a little comfort up on this stage.

“That’s great! Well, Akamatsu-chan continues, saying that ‘the experience has really brought everyone together,’ and that she’s glad that, ‘going through it with anyone, it was you guys’.”  
‘Awwws’ ripple around the audience, and Shuichi feels even angrier. That was definitely edited in some way- Kaede might go along with them, but she’d never talk about the show that positively. Nor would she lie about the group getting along, not when they’d all be able to watch this and stir up more tension over false reparations.

“Akamatsu-chan is so sweet, isn’t she? She’s been a big fan favourite, despite dying so early. What a twist that was! That was really the beginning of your development, wasn’t it Saihara? Going into the game, did you ever think you’d find yourself the protagonist?”

Shuichi resists the urge to grit his teeth. “I don’t remember. I’ve had all those memories removed.” He bites off a bitter _you guys did that, remember?_ And just keeps his smile fixed in place.

The announcer just laughs, and so does the crowd, and Shuichi wants to sink away. “So what was reuniting like? I almost wish we could have been there!” The crowd roars in agreement as she looks to him, like she’s ribbing a friend, sly and sweet like Kaede teasing Chabashira.

“It was…” Shuichi doesn’t have the words for it. “I don’t know. I cried a lot.” The audience awws again, and he hates them. They don’t get to know how he felt. They don’t get to creep in and listen to all his failures, all the things he wishes he’d done better.

The announcer flaps her hands. “Oh, you’re going to make me tear up!” She says, and she sounds like she means it. He wonders, briefly, what Kokichi would think of this kind of liar. “Now, I’m sorry to ask, Saihara, because I know you’re shy- but how are you two? Have things… developed, in any way?” 

Shuichi shifts on the stool, thinking back to the last time he spoke to Kaede- how she said she would text him, and how she didn’t, and he didn’t, either, and how they just kept avoiding each other, her death and his life on their shoulders. “I don’t- we’re fine. We’re still friends.” He hopes so. God, he hopes so.

“Aha, of course you are! But I meant more… romantically. I think we all saw the tension between you!”

 _“What?”_ Shuichi rips his eyes away from the woman to the audience staring, laughing at him, like they know his own feelings better than he does. “No, god, it’s never- it’s never been like that, I-” And his face is turning red, and that’s definitely not helping his case. Maki reaches over and squeezes his arm, gently, and Shuichi wants to _die._

The announcer laughs again. “Aw, am I interfering? Forgive me, Saihara-san! But I’m sure she likes you too. Who wouldn’t? I know that you’ve got a few female fans of your own~” Her voice drops a little, sly and sensual, and a high cheer comes tearing from the audience.

Maki, wonderful, brave Maki, cuts in with “I think it’s hard to form relationships at this stage, when we all have so much to deal with on our own.”

“And it’s not like that,” Shuichi insists, because his feelings for Kaede are already so complicated that the idea of adding romance to that mix gives him a headache to even think about. 

Fortunately, Maki sacrificing herself has drawn the announcer’s attention, and she immediately jumps into interrogating Maki about Kaito for what feels like forever, until all three of them are desperately trying to change the subject, and Maki sounds like she’s a few seconds away from tears. 

“Gosh, there’s just so much to ask about! I hope this isn’t the last interview we do, because I just want to pick your brains for every detail!” The announcer laughs, crossing her legs. Shuichi thinks about running for one of the tripods standing around and beating himself to death with it.

The interview goes on, and on, and on, and they pretend they’re okay, and they talk about the most traumatizing execution and how relieved they are that it’s all okay, and how nobody is dead, and how it’s all fine. And then she asks- “So, just to clarify, we’ve had a lot of people talking about how this is the end of Danganronpa. Do you really think that’s true?”

The answer is no, and it blinks above their heads, but Shuichi, who has zoned out by this point, says “god, I hope so.”

A hush falls over the crowd. _Ah,_ he thinks. _I fucked up._

Quickly, Himiko tries to do damage control. “I- I mean, didn’t everyone vote for it to end? If it continued, it might lose money because of us, and that- that would suck!”  
It’s a terrible lie, and Shuichi can see death hanging over his head. 

But the announcer rolls with it, letting out a surprised laugh. “Ah, yeah, I get it! That was a pretty surprising end, huh? Everyone felt really moved by your speech, Shuichi. And K1-B0’s sacrifice! It was really incredible. Some people even thought that Danganronpa should be in trouble. Do you think that, or do you just think the games should end? Would there be anything that would change your mind and make you think Danganronpa should continue, now you know that everyone’s really alive?”

Above the audience, the projector flashes again. It’s footage of their friends now, all crowded around a television- it must be live. They must be watching this. It’s as blatant of a threat as it gets.

Maki grits her teeth and lowers her head. Himiko won’t look away from the floating screen, Chabashira next to Gokuhara, her fists held up. Shuichi knows he’s the only one who will speak. 

“I-” He looks over at the cameras. The audience. He doesn’t need to be convincing. He could just say what they want him to, but look miserable. Hope his truth gets through the lies. Tell Danganronpa he’s just not a good actor. Shuichi thinks about every single death, every single person he watched leave, every trial, misplaced papers, investigating the rooms of the gone, every motive, every day he spent alone, every piece of regret that cut into his back, stacked up there like nerves in his spine, fragile, brittle, cruel and painful.  
He looks back up to the screen, at all the people sitting there, who trust them- they don’t want them to back down, but Danganronpa… it could do anything to them. To Kaede, her eyes filled with worry, Kaito with his jaw clenched, Kokichi…

Kokichi isn’t there, Shuichi notes, almost casually. He said he didn’t care about this, didn’t he? He probably doesn’t want to see him. Kokichi would probably play along, wait for the right time, lie through his teeth and hide his pain and almost win.

Shuichi isn’t Kokichi. He isn’t Kaede, either. He’s not inspirational or clever, he’s just angry. Bitter. He doesn’t care about what Danganronpa think, what this stupid, flighty audience think, who voted to end the show and then crawled back for more.

_A long time ago, he sat on a couch with someone else and they watched people die and they were sympathetic and jealous all at once._

“I hope that every single person involved in the production of Danganronpa gets thrown in jail forever,” he hears himself say, tone measured and calm. Maki looks up sharply, and even Himiko tears her eyes away from the screen, and they stare at him.

The announcer looks genuinely shocked. “W-well, that’s certainly-”

“I mean,” he interrupts her. “We’re all between sixteen and eighteen. I think the only person who’s not a minor, actually, is Amami, and this is his second game, right? Not to mention what you all did to our memories and personalities. I am literally a different person to whatever sick bastard signed up for this.” Shuichi laughs, and it sounds like it’s someone else's, like he’s back in the courtroom. “So it’s pretty weird that we’re… legally allowed to do this? I didn’t consent to any of this.”

“Well, you did-”

“No,” he says, raising his voice, turning to look at the announcer now, his smile biting into his face. “I didn’t. Not this person, that you built to be killed. You designed personalities that would hurt and break in your simulation, and then you set us out here like it’s okay?”

“Shuichi,” Maki says softly.

“Kaede’s not okay! I’m not okay! Not a single one of us is okay- you won’t even let us see Shinguji, and god knows what your fucked up backstory did to him. An incestual serial killer who sees ghosts, are you serious? And now he’s supposed to live like that?”

The announcer keeps laughing, keeps trying to direct the conversation, and he just talks over her. “Looks like Saihara-kun, looks like- Harukawa, what do you-”

“I hate this!” Himiko shouts. It gets even Shuichi to shut up, and they both stare at her. She wipes her eyes angry, hands still tight around the hairclip. “We didn’t even want to do this, you p-planned it without saying anything, and now Shuichi-”

“You threatened us!” Shuichi shouts, and he sees the lights on the cameras turn off, people running onstage to clear them off, and he knows they’re no longer broadcasting, but he raises his voice and looks at the audience. “We’re fucking trapped here, we-” 

That’s as far as he gets before someone grabs his arms and hauls him away.

\--

**_Danganronpa star melts down on stage._ **

**_Danganronpa inhumane? Critics may be supported by the ultimate detective._ **

**_Danganronpa done for good?_ **

**_You’ll never believe what Saihara Shuichi just said!_ **

\--

Shuichi thinks he deserves a little bit of sulking. It’s his right, really.

They dragged him back to the compound and threw him in his room. He shut up as soon as they took him offstage, because he recognizes a losing battle and would have liked to keep a bit of dignity, and by the time they’ve locked his door and told him, darkly, that there would be consequences for lying like that, all his anger had burned away into shame. Shuichi stormed away from the locked door and sat down on the floor, and once again he’s rearranging his bookshelf, lost in his thoughts.  
 _You fucked up you fucked up you fucked up._

Kaito knocks, calls in, and Shuichi tells him to go away and then goes silent until he leaves. “Just let us know if you need anything,” he says, and then, hesitating, “we care about you, bro.” It makes him feel worse, so he takes his time running his fingers over the pages, hoping for a papercut, throws the heavier ones down just to hear the thump they make, feel the heft of them on his neat floorboards.  
Someone rattles his door. “Not in the mood,” he replies, staring even more intently at the books. Alphabetical order didn’t feel right. He tries shifting them around, going by height this time. The door rattles again, but he ignores it- it’s probably some nurse with no respect for his boundaries ready to grab him and haul him off to therapy. He slots a book between two others, then pulls it out and moves it a little further left. They all look too unnatural together, all rough edges and smooth signs, height differences and awkward gaps at the back of the shelf.

His door draws open. Shuichi turns around.

There stands Kokichi, wearing the same shirt he was three days ago, his hair puffed around his ears, sticking up even more than usual. His legs are bare, and from the floor Shuichi can spot old marks around his thighs- things he can’t look at for more than a second without tearing his eyes away, feeling like he’s intruding despite the fact that it’s Kokichi in his bedroom. 

“Hey,” Kokichi says. His voice sounds rough. He’s got one hand on his left arm, rubbing just below his shoulder, like the skin there doesn’t fit right. 

“Hey,” Shuichi echoes. He’s not sure what this is. A peace treaty? A continuation of their argument? Is Kokichi going to call him stupid for what he did? It’s not as if he disagrees. Part of Shuichi wants Kokichi to sneer at him, call him naive and foolish and tell him how he failed. He wants Kokichi to be angry, careless, mocking, like he imagined him after he died. Kokichi, whispering in his ear while he stared down Tsumugi, asking if he’s able to go through with it.  
More than that, though, he doesn’t want to see Kokichi hurt again. He wants his masks up, knows it’s selfish, wants to pull them down and see everything. He wants Kokichi to play villain, martyr, fridged companion, vengeful spirit. That’s not fair to him, though.  
Briefly, Shuichi imagines him out on that stage. It’ll happen soon, maybe the both of them together talking about their ‘rivalry’, which wasn’t a rivalry but an uneasy friendship until Miu decided Kokichi needed to die and Kokichi decided he needed to advance his plan. He doesn’t want Kokichi to have to go through that. He doesn’t want to see him tired. 

“I don’t want to fight,” Shuichi says.

Kokichi shifts, his stubbed fingers curling just slightly into the sleeve of his shirt. His eyes flick away. “I don’t, either.”

He looks so… human here, so normal and small and- Shuichi wants to fight, wants someone to fight him, but not this person, not the boy standing here who won’t meet his eyes. He’s not sure what to say, so they just stare in silence for a while longer.

“I saw… the interview. You know.” Kokichi lifts his gaze to the ceiling, and he seems to recover a little of his usual energy as he does. “You’re really naive, you know?”

“I know,” Shuichi says, pushing a hand into his hair. “It’s going to backfire. It’s going to hurt the others.”

Kokichi snorts. “Not like they can’t use a bit of a push,” he says. “They’re far too complacent as it is.”

Shuichi frowns, chancing another look at Kokichi’s face. He still looks vulnerable, bared and human and depressed in his three-day laundry. It’s the first time he’s seen him without some kind of makeup on in a while.  
He also looks better than he has since he woke up, a spark in his eyes that Shuichi suddenly realizes he's- missed, even being awake and seeing Kokichi again.

“I thought you said you didn’t care about rebelling?”

Kokichi moves over and squats down on the floor across from him, crossing his legs. “I say a lot of things, Shuichi. You should know this by now.”

Shuichi bites his lip. "Do you... do you really think it's going to be okay?"

"I think that if they try anything with us, they might find themselves in a bit of trouble. They're clearly trying to rebuild, and no matter what they say, they've lost a lot of fans." Kokichi grins, slowly. "I've checked the internet. Shit is brutal."

"Really?" Kokichi holds out his monopad, and Shuichi quickly shuffles over to sit by him. They scroll through a long list of headlines together, forum posts where nobody can make up their mind. It's not all good- in fact, a lot of people hate him just as much as they hate Danganronpa, and a lot of people claim that the show was getting boring, that this was a satisfying last season and it's sad seeing the company try this hard to recover. But there is discord there, controversy, some demands for Danganronpa to be held responsible, even if most people seem to lack empathy for the characters. "Wow."

"A lot of people are disappointed you and Akamatsu aren't fucking," Kokichi says casually, and Shuichi chokes on air. He grins wickedly, his hair greasy and puffed up, bags under his eyes, and Shuichi has never been so pleased to see a smile in his life. The lights in his room are dim, humming, white, and they wash Kokichi out, but despite his unkept appearance, when he readjusts the way he's sitting, tucks his legs sideways, Shuichi thinks he looks oddly pretty.

"I was really worried about you," he says, before he can think any better of it.

Kokichi's smile slips. "I heard."

"I'm sorry." 

He shrugs, looking away, turning off the monopad and tucking it away. "You weren't lying."

"I didn't know what I was talking about."

Kokichi snorts, looking at Shuichi with half-moon eyes. "You never do, Saihara."

Shuichi laughs, softly, stares at the floor. "Yeah."

"Oh, come on, stop feeling so sorry for yourself. If they lock you up somewhere, I'll break you out!"

"You will?" Shuichi blinks at him. Kokichi pulls his knees against his chest, tucks up tight, then reaches to fiddle with his hair. 

"Sure! I just broke into your room with a bobby pin and a butter knife, Shumai. That's some movie shit." Kokichi pulls the items out of his hair, grinning bright and cheshire.

Shuichi stares at him, and his hair twisted and fluffy, and his hands with scarred knuckles and thin wrists, his eyes violet and vibrant, freckles under his eyes, so faint they're hard to see. He leans closer without thinking.

Kokichi leans back. "Uh, earth to Shuichi? You're looking at me like I've got a great big murder clue on my face."

"You have freckles," Shuichi says, with the tone of someone unveiling a 'great big murder clue'.

Kokichi blinks, then his eyes flick down. A little more color comes to his face. "I- yeah, barely. I draw 'em on, sometimes. These are more, like, blemishes."

"They suit you," Shuichi says. They do. He sits back, and stares at Kokichi again, and he can't quite see them anymore. "You need to get more sun."

"Ha. I'd need to be allowed to go outside, for that. I'm not allowed in the garden."

"What if you were supervised?" Shuichi asks, half joking, his mouth pulled up just a little.

Kokichi, once again, looks surprised, but quickly recovers, smirking back at him. "Well, Shuichi, if you find anyone who _isn't_ currently in trouble for yelling at his keepers on an international livestream, be my guest."

Shuichi winces. "Ah."

"Yeah, ah." Still, Kokichi doesn't seem displeased. It reminds him a little of when they were in the game- when Kokichi threatened to kill him and Shuichi still came back the next day and asked if he wanted to hang out. "So, partners? Again?"

Shuichi laughs. "If you'll have an idiot in trouble with his keepers, sure."

Kokichi leans his chin on his knees and wraps around them, still with that quiet satisfaction. "As long as you don't try and kill me, you'll be a step up from Iruma."

\--

_"I hope I throw them for a loop."_

_He looks at him, sitting next to each other on the steps outside his flat, smoking in the middle of the night. "I don't think you could help yourself. You're so complicated."_

_"Mm, I am a bit of a liar, aren't I?" He laughs. "I wonder if they'll even change my personality that much. I'm already fucked up as it is."_

_"You're not_ Nagito _fucked up," he points out. Their arms rub, twin bruises against each other,_

_He laughs again, tossing back dark hair, brightly colored bracelets from the arcade slipping over his wrist. He can't wear them at school if he doesn't want to get the shit kicked out of him, but whenever they're on their own, he pulls them on. "Sometimes, I wonder."_

_"I think you're great." It comes out suddenly, blurted between chipped teeth, and his cheeks flush pink._

_He stares at him, dull eyes- one a little lighter than the other. It almost matches his own in the light. "Thanks," he says, finally. He's unreadable, too pretty to be real, a scar across his nose, acne on his cheeks, always a little red there, even when he's as blank-faced as a sheet of paper._

_He smiles. "Yeah, you'll definitely throw them for a loop."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! sorry this is a little late up, ive been very sleepy lately. i hope this chapter is a little less depressing than the last!
> 
> EDIT: AUYUUUUFHGHHH TFW YOU LEAVE UR NOTES IN THE CHAPTER IM SO SORRY TO ANYONW WHO SAW MY DUMB PLOT NOTES


	4. as a result of losing,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kumaya clears his throat. “But! I wanted to let you all know that we’ve arranged your prize money already.” A few people’s heads prick up, allegedly curious, probably full of greed. The official’s smile sharpens. “Now, this was tricky, seeing as, technically, none of you won the game.” Immediately, a rush of discord clamours in the lobby, and he raises his hands.
> 
> “Shuichi and the others won, fair and square!” Akamatsu spits, looking angrier than he’s ever seen her.
> 
> “You got beaten, just accept that!” Momota agrees, standing beside her, burning with fury. Next to him, Harukawa, ever quiet, rolls up her sleeves. 
> 
> “Now, now, hold on,” Kumaya says, and oh, Kokichi hates him, hates how smug he is, how pleased to see them fight for their prize, some false pride Danganronpa clings to. “Winning the game involves choosing hope, typically, and seeing as that, well, didn’t quite happen, we’re having to change things up a little.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ended up a little more romantic than i intended but i blame lorde for that. kokichi's a gay bitch. shuichi's a bi disaster. they either make a very good or very bad team depending on how you see it.
> 
> sorry this is out a little late! i had my shots today uwu

Being… partners in crime, he guesses, with Shuichi is. A lot. Not quite friends, not enemies, closer than most people, still not friends. Kokichi spends his afternoons talking about potential ways to get outside, breaking in and out of Shuichi’s room until they threaten to send him to solitary “treatment” again, and then they message each other on the monopads, half plots to escape that are written in code that doesn’t quite make sense (because Danganronpa watch everything, including their messages) and half inane conversation, which Kokichi tells himself is to mislead the people creeping on their conversations, but is really because… they get along well. He remembers, on the first few days of being stuck in that hell school, while Akamatsu had gone around and tried to make friends with Harukawa and questioned Amami, Shuichi had come to speak to him. They’d spent quite a lot of time together early on, a dance of death and games, until…. Well, until Miu, and everything. 

**moriarty: all im saying is that there is nothing sexier than stealing incredibly famous art**

**holmes: how about ‘not breaking the law?’**

**moriarty: but then who would keep you busy??**

**moriarty: do you want to just be working infidelity cases all your life?**

**holmes: i don’t know. i don’t know if i want to be working as a detective after all this.**

**holmes: i mean, i do. detective work is… it’s a part of me, right down to my core. if i’m not reading mystery books, i’m driving myself crazy. i just know that… everyone will always see me as the danganronpa kid. who cheated, basically.**

**moriarty: hey, you detected good enough to end their whole murder show!**

**holmes: hubris at its finest**

**moriarty: you, or them?**

**holmes: you, actually.**

**moriarty: gasp! how cruel!!**

**holmes: haha**

It’s fun, chatting to Shuichi. And when Kokichi gets a message that Shuichi’s being allowed to leave his room again, he’s over there like lightning, and he puts up with Momota and Akamatsu fussing over him and Harukawa glaring as they all wait for Shuichi to come out. And he does, a nurse by his side, looking incredibly sheepish and relieved all at once, and Kokichi grins lazily and stretches over his chair, and when their eyes meet, he feels himself going a little soft.

And then they start hanging out, eating breakfast at four am because no one can sleep here, but Kokichi’s the only one who decides to make a full-blown meal in the middle of the night, and Shuichi comes out to scold him, and ends up sticking around and eating and then making Kokichi wash the dishes and watching, laughing whenever soapy water is flicked at him.   
It’s still tense, obviously. Kokichi doesn’t think they’ve ever had a conversation that hasn’t had _some_ layer of tension to it. But they play off each other well, banter and genuine arguments and jokes blurring into this turbulent, exciting thing, a decent distraction as they try and navigate the locked, unbreakable windows, and the mysterious doors, and the nurses’ schedule. He ends up hanging around the others, never speaking to them beyond a cruel grin and a mocking greeting, just because he’s waiting for Shuichi to finish up a conversation or a game of Monopoly to go and investigate with him. They’re manic depressive, spending seven hours together and talking the whole time, and then going whole days without speaking because Shuichi is trying to mend things with Akamatsu and Kokichi is busy listening to music and lying in the dark. They have conversations under Kokichi’s flashing, colored lights, talking about their peers, how Shinguji’s doing, what superpowers they would have, and Kokichi….   
Kokichi is not stupid enough to label this a friendship. It’s just that he remembers how he felt after that last time they hung out- a bandage on his finger, and Shuichi’s pink cheeks in his mind, and how irrational and flustered he’d felt when he slipped back to his room and slammed his door shut, and how he’d written _Trustworthy?_ under Shuichi’s picture and ranted to his Amami statue for a solid hour about stupid detectives, and then he’d gone out and helped Miu plan her death. And now he feels like that again, vulnerable and floaty and he’s got no excuse to push Shuichi away again. He blames everything for his stupid emotions- his death, the trauma that came with it, his failed plan, the quiet little liar that creeps into his mind from a time before Ouma Kokichi even existed, and who tells him it’s impossible to keep a hold on his emotions. 

Kokichi and Shuichi are in the middle of a game of chess when Amami sticks his head into the rec room. “Hey, thought I’d find you two here,” he says, smiling, something light in his eyes. “Still going with the game?”

The game has been ongoing since early that morning- originally, they had a small crowd, Yumeno, bored but with nothing better to do, and Akamatsu who seemed absolutely delighted to see them getting along, and a few others who lurked back and watched like it was the final confrontation between a hero and supervillain. They’d bantered, even Shuichi playing it up for the crowd, and it had been genuinely fun. However, after the first hour, the moves started dragging on even longer, and Kokichi and Shuichi weren’t looking away from the board, from each other, pieces hovering for a solid five minutes before they set them down- Shuichi had ordered Akamatsu to grab a rulebook at one point, after Kokichi had performed, (and admittedly, lied about) a move with his queen, and that had been the point that Yumeno had left to go and nap, and even Akamatsu left after retrieving it.  
Still, the game had been just as fun- Shuichi had dropped a little of his vocal theorizing, subtle explanations for their audience, but he’d grown more aggressive in his play, and there was a long stretch of time where they were putting each other in and out of check, not even stealing pieces or planning for the future but simply circling around each other’s kings. 

Kokichi was winning, of course, and he tells Amami as much. “I’m three moves away from checkmate.”

“Five,” Shuichi replies, quietly. “You’re five moves, and only if I move my bishop.”

“Or if I capture it,” Kokichi replies easily, his grin sharp. They’ve been arguing over this point for the last twelve minutes, and neither of them have touched the board.

“Go ahead,” Shuichi says, his eyes steady. “It’s your turn.”

Kokichi scoffs, folding his hands under his chin. “I’m working to it,” he tells Shuichi. Maybe he’s six moves away from checkmate. He’d already tried sleight-of-handing some pieces off the board, but Shuichi apparently memorizes the board’s appearance each time he makes a move, and he’d put a stop to that quickly. It’s hard to cheat when your opponent spends a solid thirty seconds staring at the board before even considering his next move. Fortunately, Kokichi doesn’t need to cheat to win- it’s just more fun. 

Amami glances between them, and his smile fits on his face like it’s natural there. “Well, do you mind putting it on hold for a bit? We’re all being dragged out to the main building. Seems that they’re trying to make nice with us.” He grins, satisfied and excited all at once. “Seems you gave them quite a stir, Shuichi.”

Shuichi ducks his head, doesn’t quite blush but looks quietly flustered. “Be careful, Amami-kun,” he says, as he stands. “I’m worried they’ll want to punish us for it. I’m-”

“You better not apologize,” Amami says, pointing an accusing finger over at him. “It was worth it, whatever they think they’re doing.”

Kokichi feels an odd pride swell in his stomach as he looks at Shuichi, which is stupid. It’s not like he did anything, and it’s not like Shuichi did anything except succumb to mental pressure. Still, he grins lazily over the chessboard, flutters his eyelashes. “Shumai really is something special, isn’t he? The most fucked up protagonist of Danganronpa.”

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says, exasperated, complicated.

“You’re not denying it,” he sings. He knows that Shuichi hates being called a protagonist, hates being reminded of his responsibility, but Kokichi can’t help needling, really, particularly when it feels like they’re getting a little too chummy. It’s for both their sakes- his, so his restless, awful emotions don’t throw themselves at his heart and hope they stick (it’s just that he’s lonely, just that he’s traumatized, it’s meaningless-) and so Shuichi doesn’t start thinking he can trust Kokichi or anything. They’re partners, not friends. (He repeats that to himself every time they split apart.)

But Shuichi is impossible to get a handle on, and he just sighs, softly, and smiles again. “Kokichi, do you mind putting this on hold?”

Kokichi slides off his seat and stretches, popping his shoulders obnoxiously. “Let’s just say I won, hm?”

“You can’t avoid taking your turn just because I figured out your strategy,” Shuichi says, following him off the chairs. Kokichi sniffs.

“One of my potential strategies. You haven’t even begun to conceive of my backup plan,” he informs him, as they both walk over to where Amami stands, watching them, amused and surprised all at once.

“It’s really good to see you two getting along,” he says, and then he reaches out and ruffles Kokichi’s hair, like he’s a baby, like he’s just a little kid, and it’s…. Irritatingly nice. Kokichi still shoves his hand away, and glares up at him, because his relationship with Amami is complicated and it’s still weird to see him moving, not just hanging upside down, unblinking, and listening to all Kokichi’s theories about the mastermind. He wonders if it’s weird for Amami, knowing Kokichi had that statue hanging around in his room. In his defense, it wasn’t as if Amami would have been his first choice, but Akamatsu’s with the katana sticking out disturbed him, Tojo’s was even worse, and Hoshi’s was too small. Plus, with all the secret hidden survivor stuff, Amami seemed fitting.   
(doesn’t make it less weird, though. Amami just smiles down at him like he’s seen worse, which is probably true, but- Kokichi still feels uncomfortable when he blinks.)

Shuichi lets out a puff of air, half laugh, half sigh. “Tell that to my monopad. Every time he sends me a link to a weird ARG at three am, I consider personally starting the real-life killing game.”

Kokichi can’t help but grin, because snarky, mean Shuichi only comes out when Shuichi is really tired (and when they’ve been playing the same game of chess for four hours now), and Kokichi kind of really likes mean Shuichi, who makes jokes about wanting to die and curses loudly when Kokichi captures a rook and he didn’t plan for it, who swigs back energy drinks and then complains loudly about how they taste like actual poison, Kokichi, you’re ruining your liver with this. “Don’t be so tsundere. You know you love my charming taste in games.” He winds his arms around Shuichi’s waist, clings from him, and it’s all just a joke, but it’s a fun joke, at least.

Amami smiles, stepping out and holding the door open for them. “I’m scared to ask for more details.”

“If Amami-chan wants me to send him more games, I’m happy to do so,” Kokichi chirps, still hanging from Shuichi as they walk down the halls.

Amami smiles, walking ahead of them, hands in his pockets, all casual and confident and lying, obviously lying, he’s just as nervous as the rest of them, but it’s his second game and he thinks he needs to look after them because of that (or maybe it’s the big-brother urges, the link to his family, the patience that comes with looking after a bunch of scrappy kids.) “I’d like that, Ouma-kun, I enjoy a good game. Although I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.”

“I think the last link he sent me gave me psychosis,” Shuichi says, dryly, and Kokichi can tell that he’s so anxious he’s gone numb, can tell from the tone of his voice, the fact his words are sharp and not nervous, that he’s making dark jokes like that. He curls his hands around Shuichi’s arm and tugs, not comforting but annoying, a mosquito by his ear.

“Come on, Shumai, wasn’t it exciting to think that god was talking to you through the internet? Giving you a mystery to solve?” He knows that Shuichi likes the mysteries, chasing links after links, finding secrets in web pages, code in code, translating things from Latin to hiragana to kanji. 

Shuichi huffs again but doesn’t reply, his gaze fixed forward. Kokichi switches to pestering Amami about inane bullshit- favourite type of hamster, who he thinks is the grossest person here, telling him facts about the ocean that are not true at all, and then Amami pushes open the door to the lobby and Kokichi drops Shuichi’s arm and pushes ahead of him, arms folded above his head.

There’s already an official waiting there, ten teenagers milling around them anxiously.

“Hey,” Akamatsu says, forced cheer, her eyes lighting up and then going awkward as they step in. “Did you finish the chess game?”

“I’m six moves away from winning,” Kokichi tells her cheerfully, hears Shuichi sigh behind- beside him, now, as they loiter by the door. 

Akamatsu looks like she wants to say more, but she goes quiet as her gaze flicks from Shuichi to the official. They’re pretending they made up, her and her detective, but only one of them is a good liar, and she’s clearly too upset to put the effort in now.

Amami clears his throat, and the official looks over, and nods, sharply. “Good,” they say, all dark hair and weary eyes, and then they murmur something into a radio hanging around their neck. Kokichi considers grabbing it and yanking, hard and violent and cruel as them.

Everyone stands about awkwardly. It’s the first time they’ve all been in a room together since the show stopped airing, Kokichi realizes- well, minus Shinguji. And Kiibo. And Shirogane. (traitor, bitch, murderer-)  
Miu won’t look at him, and she’s being incredibly obvious about it, speaking loudly to Tojo about something pointless and dumb, and Gonta, on the other side of things, is trying far too hard to meet his eyes. Kokichi’s not Miu, though, and he ignores him easily, gaze drifting over the ceiling, down to his nails, pause to murmur to Amami, all casual and light and not a big deal at all. Gonta keeps looking, though. It scratches through Kokichi’s skin, makes him burn up, and he can’t- he cannot.   
He hates it when Gonta tries to talk to him, tries to offer him forgiveness he doesn’t want, tries to make it all okay. Since he got out of suicide ward, he’s gotten pretty good at avoiding the big guy, but Gonta still tries to visit him sometimes, traps him in awkward conversation in the kitchen. All big eyes and fidgeting with his hands and looking hopeful and nervous and so not angry that it fucking-

“Hey,” Shuichi says, quietly. “Why do you think they called us all together?”

Kokichi looks away from the ceiling, back to Shuichi. He accepts the gift without thinking about it too much, without wondering if Shuichi noticed something, if he’d deduced from Kokichi’s prior behaviour that he hated being around the others. “Making a statement to the group, probably. They need at least some of us to comply or we’re fucked, and they’ll probably threaten us as a group and then bribe us privately- sows discord, that way. If we stick together, they’ll never get us to comply.”

Shuichi’s mouth twitches like he’s too anxious to smile properly. “You should become a psychoanalyst.”

“I think that’s more Shinguji’s thing.” He snorts. “As if he’d ever be capable of comforting someone.”

“Poor guy,” Shuichi murmurs, and Kokichi is surprised by the genuineness of the sentiment. It almost makes him uneasy- he still thinks Shinguji is a creep, whether it’s his fault or not. Maybe it’s because of that moment in the pitch black dark, singing that fucking creepy song, hearing that loud thud of the wood and immediately knowing that something had gone horribly wrong, having to continue, vulnerable, singing, a canary in a coal mine. “You think they’ll succeed?”

“They managed to get us to murder each other, Shuichi. I think sewing a little discord in this group they have complete control over will be a piece of cake,” he almost laughs about it. 

Shuichi nods, staring over at the official. “I’d like to think we’ve matured a little since then,” he says, but he doesn’t disagree.

They stand there, and the caged child song echoes in Kokichi’s head, and he remembers being in the dark with Shuichi across from him, thinking how easy it would be for the detective to trace the wall over to him. Gonta keeps staring. Miu keeps looking away.  
The doors to the Danganronpa headquarters slide open and a man walks through, all smiles. Kokichi hates him immediately, and Shuichi stiffens next to him.

“Greetings, class of ‘53,” he says, and then laughs like it’s a hilarious joke they’re all in on. “Nice to meet you, my name is Kumaya Nobu. I’ve already met a few of you before, actually,” and, smiling, he gestures to Shuichi, to Harukawa and Yumeno, none of whom look pleased to see him.

Harukawa is the first to speak up, tucking back a loose strand of hair, eyeing him like he’s her next target. “What do you want?” She asks, just as cold as addressing mastermind Kokichi. Haha. He thinks back to the hangar and wonders if that was just another hit for her, if she ever thinks about him or just Momota, their blood pooling on the floor together. 

Kumaya spreads his hands, innocent and cheerful. “To make things right.”   
That’s a fat load of horseshit, and nobody else looks particularly convinced, either. Silence hangs in the lobby of this sick hospital, and they are all stone faced, down to perpetually-smiling Yonaga. 

“Really,” he says, smiling wider. “Danganronpa realizes that this cast of students was… written too well, perhaps. This season was our most ambitious project, and perhaps we got the better of ourselves. Any pain you are experiencing is completely due to our overzealousness, and we apologize completely.” He drops into a bow. Kokichi wants to kick his teeth in. 

Akamatsu, diplomatic but not warm, crosses her arms under her chest, looks at him with a smile that is as sweet as it is suspicious. “If you’re ready to take responsibility for that, I’m sure we’d be willing to make amends.”

“That’s all we want,” Kumaya says, straightening up and spreading his arms out. “In fact, we’ve decided to change the way things work around here. You’re all getting new therapy programs- we’re going to open the gym and the spa to you, and hire a few more staff to… take care of things around here.”

A murmur spreads around the room. Kokichi narrows his eyes. “When do we get to leave?”

The man’s gaze slides over to him, and his smile tightens. He looks like he’s thinking of every message on Kokichi’s monopad, every violent suggestion that Shuichi shot down, only half-joking. “Unfortunately, until you pass a mental check, we aren’t allowed to release you. Your safety is of the utmost importance to us.”

“That’s understandable,” Shuichi says, his voice even, measured. Kokichi looks up at him, and his eyes are fixed straight ahead, steely. “What about access to the internet?”

“You will still have internet access, but due to privacy concerns-”

“Right,” Shuichi cuts him off, leaning back against the wall, neither disappointed nor surprised. He just nods, no less bitter, and Kokichi feels a familiar respect cross his mind. 

Kumaya clears his throat. “But! I wanted to let you all know that we’ve arranged your prize money already.” A few people’s heads prick up, allegedly curious, probably full of greed. The official’s smile sharpens. “Now, this was tricky, seeing as, technically, none of you won the game.” Immediately, a rush of discord clamours in the lobby, and he raises his hands.

“Shuichi and the others won, fair and square!” Akamatsu spits, looking angrier than he’s ever seen her.

“You got beaten, just accept that!” Momota agrees, standing beside her, burning with fury. Next to him, Harukawa, ever quiet, rolls up her sleeves. 

“Now, now, hold on,” Kumaya says, and oh, Kokichi hates him, hates how smug he is, how pleased to see them fight for their prize, some false pride Danganronpa clings to. “Winning the game involves choosing hope, typically, and seeing as that, well, didn’t quite happen, we’re having to change things up a little.”

Kokichi didn’t win, he knows that. He sacrificed everything- Miu, Gonta, himself, his family, his reputation, any tiny, forming friendships that he could have clung to. He can’t close his eyes without seeing bugs creeping over his skin, virtual reality glitching over his eyes, blood dripping from his bare shoulders, without hearing his own laughter rattling in his ears, the hiss of the press. Kokichi lost, but it wasn’t all for nothing- he did help, even if it. Well, even if it was in the worst, most pathetic way possible, all his failsafes managing to prove something, a tragic video he held to his heart being used to defend his character. 

But Shuichi did win. His patience proved useful, his observations, his willingness to wait like a snake in the grass, watching the carnage and pushing past it, never hasty, never as full of pride to think he could fake his way out of it. Shuichi won, and Kokichi helped, as best he could, and Shuichi deserves that win. 

“We’ve decided to award all of you the prize money, anyway,” the man says, like his generosity is something they should be flattered by, like it isn’t spitting in their faces. Danganronpa takes the credit for their own destruction. Danganronpa won’t let itself lose.

“It’s appreciated,” Akamatsu says, her voice like ice. 

Kumaya shrugs a shoulder, smiling like a wolf. “It’s no trouble at all. Well, it’s a little expensive, but we hope it can make up for how much our mistakes hurt you. Think of it as a settlement.”

Ah. Kokichi glances up at Shuichi at the same time Shuichi’s eyes flick down to him. They look at each other, and a moment of understanding is shared between them. 

Kokichi breaks into a grin, folding his arms behind his head- not at all believable, but not predictable either. Danganronpa can’t predict him, didn’t plan for him turning out like this. He comforts himself with that, with the fact his personality is still confusing. “Well, can’t ask for more than that,” he announces, the villain’s mask slipping over his face once more, easy as breathing. The others turn to him, shocked, horrified, and Shuichi keeps looking at Kumaya.

Miu’s face twists as she finally, finally looks at him again, her voice shaking a little when she opens her mouth. He’s not entirely sure what he expects to come out of her, but “Y-you fucking bitch! You worthless, treacherous, piece of shit-” is kind of along the lines of what he did. Chabashira lunges forward and grabs her arms, and she starts to struggle, like she’s fighting to get over to him, pain and anger written over her face. “You fucking worthless twink, you awful slut, I- I knew you would do this! You don’t care about anything!”

And Kokichi is left wordless, because he stares at Miu as she screams insults at him, as the others frantically try to calm her down, and he knows she’s lying. 

The moment of frozen shock buries itself, but Kokichi- Kokichi won’t let it go to waste, so he lifts his chin. “Hey, I did care, thanks, but nothing that happened was real, so-” she’s lying for him, trying to cover for him, and he can’t- Kokichi lets his eyes flit over to Harukawa, who looks two seconds away from killing him. “You should probably get over it.”

Miu wails, and he can’t tell if it’s a lie or not, but it hurts, and Harukawa stares right back, her jaw clamped. 

Shuichi steps forward, looking back at Kokichi with false disgust. “I know that’s not true. None of us will settle for this, right? We don’t want the money. We want justice.”

It’s a stupid speech, kitschy and cliche and meaningless, but Momota steps forward and crosses his arms. “Yeah! You can take your money and shove it up your ass! We won’t settle!”   
And Akamatsu chimes in, and the others follow Akamatsu, and all of them are bound against a common enemy, and it’s exactly what Kokichi tried before, and he knows that the official doesn’t buy it, watches his eyes narrow, that cheery demeanour cracking for just a second. Kokichi smiles back. It doesn’t matter if he buys it. It matters that the others do. 

“Well then,” he says, all false kindness, clapping his hands with a hateful happiness. “I’m sorry for inconveniencing you, then. I’ll schedule a few more therapy appointments for those of you who seem distressed.” His smile is more of a smirk, and he bows and exits swiftly, the woman by him following in silence. As they reach those sliding doors, he leans down to whisper something in her ear, and Kokichi doesn’t know what he’s planning, but he can tell it won’t be good.

Immediately, Kokichi turns on his heel and leaves, because if he doesn’t, Shuichi might try to comfort him in some way, and he needs some time to figure out a plan, figure out how he’s going to play it.

Akamatsu knocks on his door a little while later, lets him know to check his monopad. He does, and she lingers in the doorway, clearly uncomfortable, not sure what to make of him.

He’s being shifted into solitary tonight, and will be there for the foreseeable future. But don’t worry, because he’s getting therapy every day again, just to make sure that he’s nice and brainwashed.   
He throws the pad down and Akamatsu bites her lip. “They’re taking in Shuichi and Harukawa-san, too,” she says, softly. “I’m sure- just play along and you’ll be out soon, right?”

“Of course.” He doesn’t need her to tell him that. “I’ll be ready for them to pick me up after dinner.” Not that he eats dinner. Akamatsu nods, biting her lip. She turns to go, the door almost closed, and then she pops her head back in. Her expression is unreadable.

“You seem more like yourself, Kokichi.” 

Ha. What a joke. As if she knows anything about him. As if there’s anything to know, any _self_ to know.

Because the truth of it, the truth that had slipped away from him until Shuichi reminded him that he had a purpose here- was that Kokichi’s sense of self didn’t matter. He was a mess of lies, and he would continue to be, no matter what his mind tried to tell him. The truth was that Kokichi would say whatever, do whatever it took to bring Danganronpa down. 

And that hasn’t changed.

\--

Shuichi spends the next five days in solitary confinement, and he doesn’t bother trying to rebel- what’s the point, when he’s not going to change anyone’s mind? No, he’s looking forward now, looking for a way out of here, and he knows that somewhere in the facility, in the stark white, empty rooms they’ve dropped them off in, Maki and Kokichi are looking too.

They make him take lie detector tests, and Shuichi can’t tell what they’re thinking with that one. The ultimate detective knows that lie detectors are bullshit, but still he tells them that he recognizes his actions were rash, and when they call him out on lying he insists he doesn’t know what they mean, that his heart rate is high due to stress, and then they tell him he should take some time to calm down, and he spends seven hours alone in a white room with no concept of time and the knowledge that this is a genuine form of torture that many countries have decided is inhumane for prisoners. His worry for the others keeps him distracted, and he can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing- to keep his mind busy, or to keep it anxious. It keeps him together, though, keeps him from doing anything stupid, and by the time they let him out, most of his energy is drained. They seem pleased by that, by how quiet he is in that final interview, back to the shy little detective they wrote, and they set him out and inform him he can expect this if he acts up again. 

Neither Kokichi nor Maki are out- he imagines that they don’t trust it’s safe to let Kokichi out, and Maki probably lost it and yelled at them after a while. He bites his nails away in nervous sympathy, hopes they’re doing okay, that the loneliness isn’t eating them up. It’s cruel. It’s awful. They’re trying to break them. He thinks of Kokichi being kept in that white room forever, because they can’t trust their own character. He thinks of Maki, protective and kind and burning with how much she cares for them, who won’t forgive herself for leaving them alone.

The first thing Shuichi does when he gets out is find Iruma. She happens to be in her room, playing something on an actual laptop- there are a few floating around, all with the same limitations as the monopads. She looks surprised to see him, and he can’t blame her.

“S-Saihara!” Quickly, she shuffles off her bed. Her hair is pulled up in pigtails that bounce around her bare shoulders, wearing a tank top and shorts- probably pajamas. It’s late, isn’t it? (Shuichi’s concept of time kind of broke in that white room. He doesn’t remember sleeping, but he must have.) 

“Hey.” The energy here is definitely weird. They were never close, and especially now that he’s been spending so much time with Kokichi, he figures it’s to be expected that things are tense. “Um, I was- how are you?”

She avoids his eyes, pulling at one of those pigtails, and shrugs a shoulder. Shuichi’s mind flicks to another girl, all blonde pigtails and shifting characters, and his stomach drops. But it’s just Iruma, looking nervous and shifty. “Um, good? I’ve been hanging with Chabashira and stuff…” She trails off, and Shuichi realizes that in the simulation, the only people she ever really hung out with were Kokichi and Kiibo. And now one of them killed her, and the other one…. 

Shuichi tries not to think about Kiibo too much. It makes him feel a little hopeless, that that’s one classmate he trusted and cared for and was close to, who wasn’t… real. None of them are real, really, but Kiibo doesn’t exist outside of a computer program. And their Kiibo doesn’t exist at all, probably, all deleted files of memories of them

“Um, that’s good,” he says, awkwardly. He pauses. “You should hang out with Akamatsu. I think you’d get along.”

“Heh, maybe.” Iruma pulls at her hair again, twirling the ends around her fingers, and it’s… so similar to what Kokichi does when he’s bored that it’s a little disconcerting. “Sorry, what did you want?”

She’s a lot quieter out of the simulation. Shuichi takes a breath. “I was wondering if I could ask for a favor.”

That seems to bring her temper up, and she actually grins. “Sure. Who’m I to turn down the great Saihara?”

“Y-you don’t have to,” he stutters, but she waves his nervousness off. “Okay. So I was wondering…” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out his monopad, holding it out.   
Her blue eyes flick down and fix there, and her shoulders tense. “I was wondering if you could alter this,” Shuichi murmurs. “So that we could reach the outside world? Actually send out messages, I mean.”

“I…” Iruma shrinks back, still looking down. “Saihara, I’m not… I’m not actually an inventor, or anything.”

“No, but you do have the memories and knowledge to back it up,” Shuichi says, just as quietly as before. “And we all had an interest in our talents even before we received the memories, right? Not to mention that the…” he takes a breath. “I’ve read the files, about memory alteration, and implanting talents. They can’t actually alter intelligence levels or anything. They just implant some new memories and traits. You really are a girl genius, Iruma-san.”

Iruma stares at the monopad. A flush spreads over her cheeks, and she bites the inside of her cheek, squeezing her eyes shut. “I- I don’t know. I don’t even know if I worked on anything major before, I haven’t even touched a screwdriver since I woke up-”

“Please,” Shuichi says, and she looks up at him, and he remembers when Kaede begged for her help. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could do it.”

She lets out a long breath, cheeks puffed out, then she sighs. “I won’t alter the monopad, they’ll know immediately. But if you can find some way to get another, or a phone, or anything… I’ll see what I can do. But I don’t make any promises, Shit-hara.” Her gaze hardens, and she pokes him in the chest. “And if they catch us, I’m fuckin’ blaming you.”

He can’t help but smile, tucking the monopad. “That’s our Iruma,” he says, hope filling his chest. “I’ll be back with a pad, I promise.” 

She turns bright red and looks away, crossing her arms. “Better be a monopad and not a sanitary one, or I’ll kick your ass.”

Shuichi’s own face flushes, but he nods as he hurries out of the room.

He spends the next few days making awkward small talk with Kaede, who looks like she might cry when she sees him, and then he moves over to talk, and they just… stall. They’ve held this awkward truce since the interview, where neither of them acknowledges the fight, and neither of them can get past it, and it just… festers.  
He also spends time with Kaito, mostly talking anxiously about Maki, but when Shuichi turns to him and asks for a favor, Kaito perks up immediately.

That’s how they end up in Shuichi’s room, armed with a pair of bats and a baseball from the gym. They play several rounds of somewhat successful baseball, Kaito playing at being the boisterous friend, and Shuichi being anxious and nervous but still going along with it. It’s actually kind of fun, especially when Shuichi doesn’t really care about any of the things in this room.   
The ball flies over his hand with wicked speed and crashes into the monopad on his desk.

“Oh fuck,” Kaito says, smothering a laugh with his hand. “Dude, I’m so sorry.”

Shuichi sighs heavily, all relief, and he walks over, picks apart the glass and metal. It’s absolutely splintered, and he says aloud, “Kaito, this is… in pieces,” to let him know it was an absolute success.

When a nurse comes rushing into the room, she finds Shuichi desperately trying to hold the shattered pad together, and quickly sweeps the remains into a bag, exasperatedly telling him he’ll have to wait for a new one and spending ten minutes scolding them for being idiots- but she leaves with a slightly fond shake of the head, saying “boys,” and paying no attention to the missing chips from the phone.

Shuichi delivers them to Iruma proudly, who stares up at him like he’s crazy. “You know there’s more to a phone than this, right?”

“I thought the rest was just… holding it,” Shuichi says, feeling a little stupid. Iruma groans, throwing the chips into her bedside drawer (which Shuichi is very careful to look away from) and rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, shithead, and what did you think the screen did?” She shuts the door, frowning for a moment. “Those’ll probably still have the malware on them, but I’ll work in getting it out. It’ll be slow going though- I’ll probably work on it under the covers at night, pretend I’m jerking off.”

“Oh my god,” Shuichi says, covering his face. She cackles wildly. 

“Hey, I can’t have them catching on, can I? Now go get me some more parts.”

Shuichi shifts, nervous. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Wires, screens, small devices, watches- things like that. I can make use of most of it. Also, things like pins and shit, little screws. And, um.” She clears her throat, looks away. “G-Gokuhara should have a little kit for adjusting his glasses, those- those come with ‘em a lot of the time and usually have screwdrivers ‘n shit. If. If you could get it off him, that’d be-”

“I’ll do my best, Iruma-san,” Shuichi tells her, and she nods, still looking away, and he pats her arm. They sit there quietly for a little while, and he thinks of Kaede, and his heart pangs. “Iruma?”

“Yeah?” She doesn’t look at him.

Shuichi swallows. “What- what do you think of Ko- of Ouma?”  
He knows it’s a dangerous question, knows it even before she tenses up, even before he says it. But it’s- he can’t help thinking that it’s as similar as it’s going to get, that trial and Kaede’s, one friend pinning a crime on the other. He knows it’s not the same, but he remembers how- how despicable he thought Kokichi was during that trial, and how he thought he was just as despicable during the first. 

Iruma lets out a laugh, heavy and dry all at once. “Geez, Saihara, awfully personal, don’t you think?” She looks up at the ceiling, plants her hands behind her, leans back and sighs again. “I don’t know. I try not to think about him.”

Shuichi nods, not feeling particularly comforted- but it’s not really his business. He rubs his own arm. “S-sorry-”

“I mean, I tried to kill him first, so- it’s kind of unfair to be angry at him,” she says, laughing without humor, looking at the roof. “But I am. Angry. And sad. And Sorry. I thought…” She glances sideways, twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “I thought we were friends. And then I thought he was just using me for my brain. And now I don’t know what I think- if he was really good in the end. If ending the killing game was a good enough excuse for doing what he did, because-” she inhales sharply. “It wasn’t fair on Gokuhara. He shouldn’t- he’s a good kid, he shouldn’t’ve been dragged into it, but he- he chose to, and it’s not like the little shithead lied more than Monokuma- like, if Gokuhara had found the light on his own, would he still have done it?”

“I-” Shuichi starts, but she bulldozes forward, flopping back on the bed, her hair spread out around her, angelic.

“And if- if he knew, if Ko- if he knew, he coulda just not come, you know? It wasn’ just that the virtual world was the perfect crime or whatever, I- I really couldn’t’ve done it in real life. I really couldn’t have, I woulda- I woulda given up if he hadn’t come.” She breathes out heavily. “I didn’t- you know that, right, Saihara? I didn’ want to kill him.” She turns to him, still laying on her back, desperate as anything, and all of a sudden Shuichi is back in the courtroom, the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.

He looks down at her, and he nods. “We’re not killers.” 

She nods back, curling her hands into the blankets, her chest rising and falling, steady, anxious, alive. “Yeah. I don’t… I don’t know if he knows, though.”

Shuichi bites his lip. “I’m sure he does, Iruma,” he says- is he sure? What does Kokichi think about anything?

“He looked sad when he killed me,” she whispers, closing her eyes. “Every time I see him, I- He looked- he looked sad.” She laughs, shakily. “I didn’t remember coding those avatars to cry, but I could f-feel Gokuhara crying in my hair. Probably was already in that fuckin’ world.”

Shuichi doesn’t know what to say. He reaches out, hesitant, then touches Iruma’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

She flaps a hand at him, squeezing her eyes shut. “Yeah. Now get outta here. I’ve got work to do.”

Iruma’s still lying on her back, eyes shut, when he leaves, but he doesn’t mention it. 

And so begins Shuichi And Kaito’s Adventures In Breaking Shit. It fulfills two needs- Shuichi’s need for tiny, electronic parts, and Kaito’s restlessness without Maki around. After three days of this, Iruma is delighted with her stash of parts and assures him she can get started now, that she’ll let him know if she needs anything else, and Kaito has been prescribed adderall. Things are ticking along okay. Another day passes, and Kokichi is released back into the compound, and although he’s greeted a little frostily, Shuichi has to resist a strong urge to hug him. (Not because it would be weird, but because he doesn’t think Kokichi would appreciate it. Would it be weird?)

“Hey, you,” Kokichi says, grinning like he’s not as white as ghost and has the heaviest bags under his eyes Shuichi has ever seen. “Been busy in my absence, saving the world?”

Shuichi stares at him, and he knows they’re being watched, can’t be trusted together, so he just says, “I missed you too, Kokichi.”

Kokichi sniffs, turns his head away. “Bold of you to assume I even thought about you.”

“There was nothing to do but think,” Shuichi points out, and the little smile he gets feels like a victory. 

Shuichi And Kaito’s Adventures In Breaking Shit quickly becomes Shuichi And Kaito And Kokichi’s Adventures In Breaking Shit, and Shuichi watches Kokichi blow up the microwave with a mix of eggs and soft drinks with a sort of glee he’s never seen before, and he thinks about what he’ll say when he sees the phone. They don’t plot as openly as they did before- they have casual conversations over chess about two kingdoms, one protecting it’s reputation, the other filled with killers, and they argue back and forth over different kinds of unsolvable crimes, and they stare out the windows casually and don’t google anything about Danganronpa, but they follow online circles that chat about it. Things are moving along, and they feel… a little more positive, a little more secure. Maki gets out of solitary, too, and she and Kaito spend a long time hugging, and Shuichi looks at his hoarded electronic pieces and decides that they don’t need to smash any more laptops.   
And then Maki goes over and hugs Kaede for just as long, and says something quiet that makes Kaede close her eyes and bunch her hands up in Maki’s shirt.

Shuichi heads to her room again, that evening, and he knocks, and she calls out, and he goes in, and she looks up at him from her bed, her eyes widening in- surprise? Fear? Relief? 

“Hey.” She’s quiet, and looks away after a moment.

Shuichi takes a seat next to her, and she doesn’t tell him to get away. She keeps staring at her hands. He takes a breath in. 

“I’m…. I’m sorry,” he says. “It was- unfair.”

She shrugs a shoulder, quiet. “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t like you didn’t mean it.”

“I didn’t mean it like _that._ ” Not so cruel, not so angry, not when it wasn’t paired at the same time with grief and love and pain. “You know that, right? It’s more complicated than that.” She nods, the movement small, and he shifts his eyes to the ceiling. “And I’m really grateful to you in a lot of other ways.”

“I know,” Kaede says quietly. “And you know I don’t…. It’s not you,” she says, her voice catching a little. “It’s just the position you were in. That I put you in. None of my feelings are justified or fair, I know that. I just…”

Shuichi nods. “Yeah. It’s just hard not to be angry.”

“Yeah.” And then they both go quiet- there’s more to say, but the point’s all there. It’s complicated, and it’s unfair, and it’s not their fault. And they love each other, and can’t help hating each other, and it’s- it’s just like that. There’s no real way to say it.  
Kaede sighs suddenly, stretching her legs out. “I lost, and you won, and we had the same goal, and I’m still… jealous. It’s so- it’s such a horrible thing to be jealous about.” A laugh, bitter and wet in her throat. “Oh, Shuichi, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” And he’s looking at her, and she looks like she’s about to cry, and he is too, and all he can do is hug her. Shuichi lunges forward, pulls Kaede into his arms and holds her tight, and she shakes and hugs him back, just as hard. “It’s okay,” he says, and it is, because they both get it, and they’re both trying. “Kaede, you’re- you’re my best friend.”

“I th-thought Ouma was, now,” she sniffs, and then laughs again, and he can feel her tears soaking his shirt. “I was really jealous of you two, but I was also really happy you were- I don’t know.” A sniff. “You’re really funny to watch together.”

“I bet,” Shuichi agrees, thinking back to Kokichi, overly-passionate chess games, late night texts, neon blue eyeliner, and he smiles, playing with the ends of Kaede’s hair. “Well, you have Amami, right? It’s only fair that we don’t… just rely on each other.”

Kaede sits back, and her gaze is a little determined, a little firmer, and she nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we deserve- to rely on our other friends. And to…” She breathes out shakily. “To stop putting so much responsibility on each other.”

“I’ll stop thinking you were perfect if you stop thinking I did everything right,” Shuichi offers, and it gets another laugh, this one sounding a little more real. 

Kaede offers out a pinky finger. “Promise.” He extends his, and they shake on it, and she wipes her eyes. “I really missed you,” she said softly. “Not just- when you were in solitary, but I was really worried then. I missed- I missed talking to you. Being friends.”

“Me too,” he says, softly. “I thought about you a lot.”

Kaede laughs softly, then she grins at him. “I saw the interview, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know you did,” Shuichi says, a little confused. “What do you- oh.”

It dawns on him with horror, and that horror must show on his face, because Kaede snickers like she’s just tricked him into complimenting Chabashira again. “I thought you were going to pass out when she asked about us. I mean, at the time, it wasn’t so funny, because we were still fighting and stuff, but- oh my god.” She laughs again, and then she keeps laughing, like the punchline has suddenly hit, and she laughs so hard she falls sideways, while Shuichi splutters and goes red and she hugs her stomach. “I-I’m hurt, really,” she gasps. “Was it really never like that?”

“I mean- Kaede, I fall in love with everyone I meet for like five seconds, and then I get scared as soon as they start talking,” Shuichi stammers, and he only realizes that oh, that might have revealed a little too much about his preferences after he says it, but Kaede just continues to laugh.

“You- you are such a mess,” she says, snickering through her nose. “My god. If it helps, it’s never been like that for me, either.”

Shuichi lets out a heavy sigh, crossing his arms. “It’s not that funny,” he grumbles, his face still red.

“Oh, Shuichi, it’s so funny. You looked like she’d just implied you had a crush on Shirogane, or something.” And then another round of snickers.

Shuichi wants to die. “I- I didn’t mean it like that! I think you’re lovely, Kaede, and you’re really really pretty, but-”

“It got kind of complicated when I made you accuse me of murder?” She asks, and it- it doesn’t sound bitter, not right now, not when her face is still flushed with laughter and her voice is a little wheezy. 

“Yeah!” And Shuichi can’t feel bitter, either, looking down at her, and he starts smiling despite himself, and the air around them seems to soften. “You were still my best friend, despite everything, though. You know that, right?”

Kaede sits up, and takes his hand, and squeezes it tight. “Shuichi,” she says, open and honest, and kind. “I can’t imagine anything better than being your best friend. I- I could meet a thousand people, and have a hundred great, perfect boyfriends, and I will still-” Her lip wobbles, just for a moment, and she smiles at him, curling her fingers around his. “Thank you,” she says. “I don’t think anything could be better than being your friend. Especially after everything.”

“Kaede,” he says, and she blinks back tears and pulls him into another hug. He looks down at the hand on his arm, and her blonde hair, and her vest, and there’s so much to say, but they have time. So instead, he says, “is Amami painting your nails?”

Kaede sits back, and looks at him almost slyly, and says, “if you’re my best friend, does this mean I can talk to you about boys without you getting jealous?”

“I’m jealous of Amami for being tall and confident, not for any intentions he has toward you,” he assures her, and he can’t stop smiling at the way her cheeks flush, and she looks quietly pleased.

“Well,” Kaede begins. “It’s not- it’s just. We’re still figuring stuff out, and it’s not like I have any real feelings for him, because, you know, trauma and all, and it’s complicated, but we go to the garden sometimes….”

And Shuichi spends the night in her room, and she talks about Amami, and then about Tojo, who she’s grown quite close too, and then he talks about Harukawa and Himiko and how she’d really like them, and then he talks about Kokichi for a while, and they share her stashed soft drinks and listen to dumb pop music, and Shuichi thinks that Kaede is one of the best people he knows, and whatever complicated bullshit they have to deal with, and the anger he still can’t quite let go of, this is a feeling of safety that he’s really missed.

The next day, Shuichi stands in front of Kokichi’s door with a plan in mind. “Hey,” he says. “Do you want to come and play chess? I’ve got a new strategy I’d like to show you.”

Kokichi leans against his own doorframe, his eyes covered in a bright purple that is so shiny it almost hurts Shuichi’s eyes every time he blinks, tiny triangles drawn beneath them. “We’ve played a lot of chess lately,” he says, boredom dripping through his voice. “I don’t know if I want to.”

“I’m sure it’ll surprise you,” Shuichi says, mildly. He doesn’t have to try too hard to coax Kokichi out, because Kokichi is a brilliant judge of people, and Shuichi knows he could tell as soon as Shuichi knocked on his door that he was up to something.

“Well, if you insist,” he shrugs, slipping out of the door, linking their arms together like they’re off to see the wizard. “Lead on, detective.”

Kokichi talks the whole way over about the latest anime he’s been watching, super popular and great, and Shuichi is certain that this anime is not real but doesn’t call him out on it. There’s something nice about watching Kokichi speak when he gets really into a lie, animated and vibrant, his hair bobbing every time he moves his head or bounces to express something. Kokichi talks with his whole body, but even his voice is enough to draw you in- in another world, Shuichi could see him as a performer, theatrical and brilliant. It reminds him of why he was drawn to Kokichi in the first place, why he went to seek him out when Kaede was chatting with Maki or Amami. Kokichi makes you want to listen, even when you know everything he’s saying is bullshit.

Kokichi’s chatter also serves another purpose, which is distracting him enough that when Shuichi stops in front of Iruma’s door, he seems to take a moment to register it. 

He does not seem pleased. “Ah,” he says. “Shuichi. This is a pretty stupid trick to play, don’t you think? In fact, I think I’m going to-” 

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says quietly, catching him by the wrist. It’s like catching a ghost, thin and pale and barely there. “It’s a project. I want your opinion on it.”

Kokichi stares at him, and several emotions flicker in those dark eyes before they shut down. “Okay,” he says. Blank. Quiet. Nothing to find there.

Shuichi stares at him for a moment longer before he knocks on the door. “It’s Shuichi.”

Iruma’s voice echoes through, excitedly. “Oh, hell yeah, I’ve got some great news.” He listens to her approach with bated breath, watches the door swing open. “So, I’ve managed to hard reset the dri-” She cuts off. Her hand digs into the wood of the door.

“He dragged me here,” Kokichi says flatly. 

“I- I wanted to get his opinion,” Shuichi says, and it’s true, but it comes out weakly. Iruma keeps staring, her eyes fixed on Kokichi’s face, then she shakes her head and slips back inside. 

“Just- come in,” she says, the door shutting behind her. It does not feel all that welcoming.

Shuichi freezes up, and next to him, Kokichi heaves a heavy sigh. “This better be good,” he says, and he pushes the door open, and Shuichi follows. 

Iruma turns the light off, then walks over to her bed and opens up the drawer by it, busying herself by shuffling all the parts there around. It’s dim enough to see, just barely, but not through the security cameras- no fancy bug cameras, no Kiibo here. Just standard security cameras with no night mode, so when Iruma gestures them into the blanket fort she’s built on the bed and turns on the lantern there, whoever’s watching the cameras will see nothing but an incredibly weird meeting. 

Shuichi shuffles inside after her, and has a moment of panic about whether three people will fit -it’s already a little cramped- but Kokichi, still bitter and grumpy, stomps in and sets himself down on Shuichi’s lap, crossing his arms. Shuichi can feel the rage radiating off him without even seeing his face, and he winces, two different kinds of anxiety burrowing through his chest. 

Iruma mutters something filthy to herself, like an anxious response to it, and Kokichi says nothing but Shuichi turns red, and he regrets everything.

“Um,” she says, her voice quiet. “Ah. So, I’ve wiped the harddrive.” She pulls out a little box and opens it up, holds it up to the lantern. Shuichi can practically see Kokichi’s ears prick up, and he shifts a little in his lap.

“What, exactly, is this?” He asks, his tone carefully neutral, but he leans forward, and Shuichi’s heart picks up. 

Iruma bites her lip, her fingers slipping around the phone. “W-well, um. Saihara came and asked me to build him a- a phone, something that could contact the outside world. But this one’s more… more of a small comp-puter, really. I don’t think I can set it up for calls, but- but it should be able to access the internet without.” Her gaze slides away from the little device to Kokichi. She wets her lips. “Without Danganronpa finding out.”

Kokichi is quiet for a long time. Eventually, he twists around, looking up at Shuichi. “This was your big project?”

“What do you think?” Shuichi asks, nervously. Kokichi’s eyes cut through him.

He breaks into a wide, probably fake smile. “I love it! Is it ready?”

“Ah, so-” Iruma lets out a little sigh, then clicks a button. Immediately, the mash of parts, tiny screws and metal cases, a tiny screen, patchwork cover, flickers with color. Slowly, the screen goes white, and then it takes Iruma to a home screen, only one app on there- google. “So, it works.”

Shuichi’s breath catches. “Iruma, that’s- that’s amazing.” Kokichi is quiet, and Shuichi hopes that’s a good sign.

Iruma flushes, looks away. “R-right, I know. You don’t need to tell me that! I b-built this whole thing out of coffee machines and malware, you dick!” She clicks onto the app for google, and Shuichi holds his breath- and she’s met with an error screen. “Um. So, the problem is I need to connect it to the internet. And I’m not sure how to do that without making the entire staff immediately aware of its presence. I could probably have a go at hacking in? But I’m pretty sure they’ll notice it.” She turns to look at them, anxiety dripping from her face. “S-so, Saihara, that’s your problem to solve-”

“Are there any other local networks?” Kokichi asks, his tone casual. Iruma still flinches, quickly flicking up to the top of the screen and dragging down a menu. She scrolls down the list of networks- DRCAST, DRSTAFF, DRGUESTS, DRMEDIA- “There,” Kokichi says. “HDSU-12. Is that them, too?”

“Not sure,” she says, biting her lip. “It, it doesn’t follow the convention of the others, but I don’t know where we are. If we’re near other buildings, it might be theirs, but if we’re in the middle of nowhere…” She shrugs. “It’s a gamble.”

Kokichi frowns. “Surely we only need to get out one message, right? We could plan ahead, make sure we get everything out- tell someone that we’re in active danger. If we send it to the right people and Danganronpa find out, they probably won’t want to expose themselves to _more_ human rights violations.”

Shuichi lets out a soft breath, thinking. “The question is, who are the right people? We need someone who will actually take action, who will believe us, who will-”

“I can tell them to trace our IP address!” Iruma cuts in, excitedly. “For proof!”

“So, someone powerful and with money,” Kokichi says, humming. “Better to send a message than try and post it, right?”

“Like calling an ambulance yourself instead of shouting for someone else to,” Shuichi nods. “Besides, there’d be no guarantee that a social media post would gain traction.” Kokichi twists around and gives him an odd look, and it takes Shuichi a moment to realize that he started absent-mindedly petting his hair. He jumps back, turning red. “Ah- sorry!”

Before Kokichi can respond, Iruma bursts into nervous laughter, covering her mouth with her hands, almost spitting with giggles. “Oh my god, you _homo_ ,” she gasps, tipping backward.

“I- I fidget a lot!” Shuichi stutters, his gut clenching in a mix of fear and defensiveness- she’s not entirely wrong, but it’s- _it’s not like that,_ he thinks again, and then he thinks about what Kaede would say, and he wants to bury his face in his hands, but Kokichi has twisted around again to grin at him.

“Oh, sure you do,” he says, teasing. “It’s okay, Shumai, I know my hair is very cute- hard to keep your hands out of. You can keep petting me, if you like, it’s cute.”

Iruma keeps giggling. “Yeah, it’s adorable.”

Shuichi sighs, pressing a hand to his face. “Can we get back to the phone, please?”

Somehow, that seems to be all that was needed for the two of them to… well, not to get over their tension, but at least to ignore it for the time being, and when Shuichi and Kokichi are shoved out by an Iruma who’s apparently had enough of them bickering, they’ve not only got a plan for their next move, but a whole message to get to writing, and everything feels hopeful.

Shuichi’s planning on going to find Kaede and getting her to comfort his bruised ego, when Kokichi’s hand floats up to his wrist and tugs, surprisingly gently, on his shirt.

Shuichi turns to face him. Kokichi’s looking up at him with an odd expression, rocking back on his feet. “So, you were busy following in my stead, then?”

“You were in solitary,” Shuichi explained, not sure why Kokichi’s slight smile is making him feel a little embarrassed. “Someone had to start sneaking around, or the whole dynamic would fall about.”

“Uh huh.” Kokichi rocks forward. Rocks back again. He doesn’t let go of Shuichi’s shirt sleeve. “And why did you bring me in today?”

Shuichi considers the question, because with Kokichi, you really have to consider all his questions. “Because I did want your help,” he says. “And because… Iruma missed you.”

Kokichi’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t look away. Finally, he huffs. “I’m pretty missable, I guess. Endless charm.”

Shuichi can’t disagree. Kokichi- he’s so confusing, strapped up in a white uniform, in too-big t shirts, in hideous circus-pattern hoodies and bright eyeliner. “Are you mad?”

Kokichi keeps staring at him. Eventually, he shakes his head. “You’re a mystery, Shumai.”

“I try.”

Kokichi grins again, rocking back up on his tiptoes. And Shuichi is a terrible homo, a terrible bisexual, whatever, because the two of them can’t stop fighting, and Kokichi never makes sense, and if his feelings for Kaede are complicated, they’re nowhere at the level of his feelings for Kokichi.... But if he said Kokichi didn’t look- cute, charming, sharp teeth, sly grin, pale little freckles under his eyes- he’d be lying. 

But it doesn’t mean anything- Shuichi’s got weak eyes and a soft spot for the beautiful, and there’s more important things to get done before he even starts thinking about unpacking his own trauma with his classmates, let alone dating any of them.

_(Still, that night he dreams of someone’s hands in his, something he can’t have, desires that he knows are wrong, that his parents have told him explicitly, with their words and hands and belts, are wrong, and that same grin haunts him.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD im a tender bitch. apparently i think the meaning of slow burn is 'oblivious flirting in chapter 4'.   
> can u tell i love miu? can u? can u tell i would die for kaede?
> 
> also im sorry about any mistakes! i have no excuse. please know i love all of you mwah


	5. as a result of living,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shuichi kneels in front of his bookcase, itching the skin around his wrist. He’s midway through arranging his books by date (as stupid an endeavor as it is futile), stories scattered around his knees. Everything feels a little dreamlike at the moment, reality and false memories blurring. It feels like, no matter what he does, there’s no real way to keep them all together. They’re falling apart, dissolving as a group, the stress carving through them.  
> It’s this fucking hospital, he tells himself. As soon as they get out, everything will… it’ll lose the layer of panic. They won’t feel so trapped, anymore. Like Danganonpa is watching them through tiny cameras, like every move is watched, mocked, drooled over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! quick tw here, at one point a character refers to themself (joking and self-deprecatingly) with the f slur. (author is mlm, if that makes you more comfortable.) if you want to avoid this scene, ignore the big block of italics, or just from "hell yeah" to "His breath catches."
> 
> im sorry this took so long! school's started back up for me, so updates might slow a bit, unfortunately :( but actually the reason this is late is that. saihara is. hard to write goddamn. plot is also hard. the combination of these two things has me biting my nails. cant you just ramble like ouma does, detective????? cant you be performative even in your own mind??? goddammit. youve got too much trauma. im so sorry if this feels? off? at all? im not happy with the pacing and stuff but ahhhhhhhhhh its hard.

_to: Virtual Recovery Foundation  
from: Season 53 Danganronpa's contestants.  
subject: Urgent assistance needed.  
body: Dear VRF,  
you are being written to by the participants of Danganronpa's 53rd season. We are aware this may sound false, but we encourage you to trace this IP address- both to secure our identities, and because we have no idea where we are being kept.   
This is being written on a device we've put together ourselves, as Danganronpa doesn't allow any contact with the outside world. If we are discovered having written this, we will likely be placed in solitary isolation for an extended period of time, or placed into therapy sessions which are designed less to allow us to recover and more to dismiss our trauma.  
Due to Saihara Shuichi's statements in their latest interview, we are concerned for the safety of ourselves and our classmates. Danganronpa has little care for our wellbeing- their company and profits are far more important to them, and we have the sense that they are willing to do whatever they're confident they can get away with.   
Our ability to resist is limited- we cannot contact authorities, have no knowledge of our prior families, and are completely isolated from the outside world. Danganronpa, essentially, owns us until they deem us mentally stable. (We have attached an example of the documents we signed, obviously prior to the memory wipe.)  
We are aware that your foundation is eager to end Danganronpa and hold them accountable for their crimes, and we are eager to help. If you can use your influence to release us from here, we are more than happy to partner with you- our testimony is yours.  
Waiting your response,   
The class of 53._

Shuichi’s days grow restless and hopeful. He picks up baseball with Kaito, after one too many jokes about all the baseball caps in his wardrobe that he doesn’t feel the need to wear anymore. Neither of them are particularly good at it, but one day Hoshi’s walking past the gym and he drops in and helps them out, and he’s- really good, so good that Shuichi and Kaito are left laughing at themselves, stumbling over the bases while Hoshi shakes his head and looks just a little more secure in himself. They don’t play tennis, but one day they drag in Chabashira, who still practices aikido and doesn’t want to give it up, who finds them in the gym one day and makes a muttered comment about men under her breath, and proceeds to team up with Hoshi and utterly embarrass them. Shuichi’s stomach aches from laughing at the end of it as she yells at him for running backward around the court, _you absolute idiot, who made you a detective_ \- because the whole time she’s yelling, her eyes are bright with sparks.  
The next day, she drags in both Himiko and Yonaga, and Himiko always puts herself on the fielding team but nobody minds, and they manage to develop proper teams, Hoshi switching out with Himiko and always staying with the pitchers, and it’s… a lot of fun. Kaede finds out and is hurt she wasn’t included to begin with, and proceeds to join the girls' team (minus Himiko whenever they're up to bat) and shows a surprising talent for it. Following her is Iruma, and then Kokichi, and the pair of them declare themselves cheerleaders and make jokes about showing up in sexy uniforms, then get dragged into the game for proper and find themselves enjoying it- even if they’re both even worse than Shuichi. Things are still tense between them, but they play off each other well with humor, and the day after that, when they’re all gathered in the gym, Iruma shows up dragging Gokuhara behind her, her face screwed up in determination, and she can’t quite look at him, but she shoves him over to the boy’s team, and then they all look at each other and Kaede tells them to wait for a moment, and she leaves.  
And they all wait around, Himiko stirs up a bunch of kool aid for the break afterward, and then Kaede returns with Amami and Tojo on either arm, Maki dragging her feet behind them. They manage to divide themselves up, with Hoshi switching teams every round because he’s really an unfair advantage, and half of them don’t know the rules beyond the basics, and it’s really dumb, just an absolute mess. Kokichi gets “tired” halfway through and decides to throw himself onto Shuichi’s back and cackle into his hair. They step up to bat and Kokichi wobbles on his shoulders but manages to hit the ball, and then the two of them run between bases on baby giraffe legs, laughing the whole way, stumbling, and they’re almost home when Kokichi tips too far back, and Shuichi, trying to right him, overexerts forward, and he almost sinks into the splits before his ankle twists and they collapse on the gym floor. Chabashira’s screeching “Out, out! They’re out!” and Kaede runs over to check they’re okay, and Shuichi can’t stop laughing as they fall apart from each other. They have to sit out the rest of the game, Shuichi with his twisted ankle and Kokichi with a minor head injury, but they sit on the stands and cheer wildly and make bad jokes, and the entire class keeps making fun of them for it for the next week, but it’s in a good way, where none of them can look back on Kokichi and Shuichi stumbling around like they’re trying to sneak into a movie theater without grinning. 

They play baseball, and they eat together, and Shuichi has a clique with Kaede and Kaito and Maki and Himiko, but then he drags in Kokichi, and Himiko drags in Chabashira and Yonaga (what most of the class refer to quietly as ‘Himiko’s girls’), and Kaede drags in Amami, and then Shuichi and Kokichi haul over Iruma, who quietly insists that Gokuhara be included, too, and Chabashira invites Hoshi over, who she’s formed a really odd friendship with, and within a matter of meals, they’ve pushed all the tables together to make room, eating like one big…… well, family, really. If with a few more layers of dysfunction.

Things aren’t always perfect. Kokichi and Shuichi fight a lot, for one- in a weird, oddly coded way, where often everybody else knows before they do, that their match of checkers has taken on a slightly personal tone, that the fact they aren’t talking is because their last conversation cut a little too deep. They always make up again- hard not to, when you’re busy preparing failsafes and backup escape plans, because you can’t just rely on the outside world. 

“You’re thinking too big,” Shuichi tells him one day, and Kokichi scowls and tosses back his hair- growing out a little, past his shoulders when it’s wet and sticking out almost horizontally when it’s dry and he’s fiddling with it. 

“You’re thinking too small,” he says, eyes narrowed. “We need to be prepared for anything- if they aren’t going to release us, we’ll force our way out.”

Shuichi makes a frustrated sound low in his throat. “This- this isn’t a simulation anymore. We can’t just go blowing stuff up.” They bleed red, out here. It’s weird how that color seems unnatural to him now- how every time Shuichi bumps into a corner or falls on his ass, he expects to see magenta seeping through his skin. 

“It’s not like we knew it was a simulation, then. I don’t see what changes about this,” Kokichi argues, stabbing a finger into the cute, confusing doodles that actually lay out a comic/plan for blasting through the walls of the compound.

“A lot of things,” Shuichi says, curling his own hands up. “We have no guarantee that this is the end of the building- it might just lead to another compound. It’s possible there are other survivors here, and we can’t risk hurting them. Not to mention, it’s possible there could be genuine consequences for being hasty. We need to acknowledge that we were built for that world, and that a lot of our instincts are-”

Kokichi had stood up then, suddenly, and he’d looked at Shuichi blankly. “I don’t know if that applies to you, dear detective,” he’d said, his tone making it clear that he felt personally targeted- Shuichi didn’t have the time to correct him, or take his own words back, or apologize, because he’d just turned around. “You’ve been thinking far too small ever since Kaede died.”

It’s harsh, and it’s unnecessarily mean, and it’s true, and it’s why Shuichi tells him, “because going big worked out really well for you.”

And then they’d avoided each other for the next day until they met up to check the phone for responses with Iruma, and had decided to send the message to a second organization, now, because they couldn’t risk the first group going and blabbing, and they’d been on the same page so completely there, as they made new plans and agreed to get Iruma some new pieces to try and make a blowtorch, something that could give her a little more options when it came to inventing. They’d agreed on everything, and the plan had felt solid, and then when they left her to her own devices, they found themselves across a chessboard again, and it started as making more quietly coded plans, and everything clicked and came easily, and they weren’t fighting anymore.

Kaede, too, he has a slightly turbulent relationship with- as in, when Shuichi is feeling okay, she’s the best, and when he starts feeling anxious and resentful, he can’t look at her. She gets it, though, because she feels it too- although she definitely doesn’t sulk as much as he does. He’s stepped up a little, trying to take some of the weight from her shoulders. Hercules offers Atlas a break to fetch gold apples from the garden, and she walks with Amami and Tojo in the tiny garden and laughs, the dead resting in paradise, in the cold sun. 

Shuichi goes to therapy. He sits in that yellow room, and his therapist asks him carefully-worded questions about how he’s feeling, and he lies and says better, talks about baseball, draws forth that laughing energy when she beams and says she’s glad he’s feeling better. She’s surprisingly easy to fool, especially considering his recent outburst…  
Although, he doesn’t actually know how long ago that was. His sense of time is off, here, especially with all that time in solitary. It’s been at least two weeks since the interview, surely. Less than a week since they sent out their distress call. Still, concerningly long. Shuichi resolves to bring it up with the others, adds yet another note to his to-do list, picks himself up, and keeps going.

Nights, cheap memories of cigarettes and static television and someone’s small hands. Nights, magenta blood, bears tumbling around like the world’s worst acrobats, fifteen different people looking at him with hope. He thinks of Shirogane, curls up in bed, hates her, cares for her, still remembers when he was desperate to save her life, to escape with her, and Maki, and Himiko, and Kiibo...

Shuichi stumbles to the kitchen at four am and slams an energy drink. He only realizes after he's drunk all of it that Yonaga and Tojo, mid-shouting match, are staring at him like he's grown a second head. He apologizes awkwardly and retreats, and then two days later, he has to sit down and make them talk it out, Kaede at his side with her arms crossed and worry all over her face. Shuichi spends more time watching his classmates, then, making notes over which ones seem more stressed, which ones need to be more involved in the group.

Shuichi draws maps of the compound until he knows the layout by heart, can recite the placement of every door in his sleep. His dreams are hyperfluorescent, the killing game but it's in the compound, exisals lurking down those long, hospital halls. He delivers new tasks to Iruma just for a sense of progression, the stash of small, explosive devices feeling equally terrifying and reassuring. He's not sure when he started thinking of destruction as a normal part of his life.

Shuichi kneels in front of his bookcase, itching the skin around his wrist. He’s midway through arranging his books by date (as stupid an endeavor as it is futile), stories scattered around his knees. Everything feels a little dreamlike at the moment, reality and false memories blurring. It feels like, no matter what he does, there’s no real way to keep them all together. They’re falling apart, dissolving as a group, the stress carving through them.  
It’s this fucking hospital, he tells himself. As soon as they get out, everything will… it’ll lose the layer of panic. They won’t feel so trapped, anymore. Like Danganonpa is watching them through tiny cameras, like every move is watched, mocked, drooled over. 

\--

_They’re lying on the floor. There’s a stain on the carpet, and everything smells like sugary, guava-watermelon-lemon fake energy drinks that bite his tongue and even smell toxic. He hates them, but the boy next to him doesn’t, and he won’t drink vodka if they aren’t mixed in- and all they can afford is cheap vodka, marked up by the upperclassmen who get it from their older sisters._

_They’re sprawled over the floor, drunk out of their minds, seeping through the carpet, giggling about something stupid, talking about how fucked up they are._

_“Have you heard of Danganronpa?” He asks, pushing himself up, and the whole world swims. He wonders for a moment if he needs glasses, eyes floating in the dim light, and then they fix on that boy’s face and he wants to look at it forever._

_The owner of the face blinks, slow eyelashes, little patterns of stars over his cheeks. “Everyone knows about Danganronpa,” he says slowly, laughs a little. “It’s not as- as underground as they act like it is.”_

_“Do you watch it?”_

_A pause. How long have they known each other? A year now, right, and a little more? Since they entered the same high school and immediately got singled out for their small frames and their pretty eyes and high cheekbones, and their weird interests and the fact they can’t stop lying or laughing, write all their essays on creepypasta or internet mythos._ _  
__He’d never ask this if he was sober. He never watches if he’s sober. Danganronpa is fucked up, everyone knows that, glamorous and exotic- it’s cool to be into it if you’ve got money, if you talk about it like a dirty secret, a mysterious dark side. It’s not cool if you’re poor and grubby and everyone already thinks you’re fucked up. It’s not cool if everyone can see the scars on your arms when you get changed, when your uncle murdered your mom for choosing his brother over him, when you live alone and everyone knows._

_The boy- nameless, perfect, everything, everything he thinks about some nights, stares at him, and then he nods, and he giggles. “How could you tell?”_

_“I- I couldn’t. I mean. I do. I watch it.” He stumbles over his own words, a fever in his face, and the boy shuffles closer. His hair is so dark. He looks like a demon in the dim light, cruel temptation and kindness that he doesn’t know how to accept._

_Demonic, indulgent, he laughs again, and their faces are so close, hair pooling over that stained carpet. It still smells of sugar. “That fucking figures.”_

_“Shut up.” It comes out like a breath, eyes fixed on his lips. “I really… I really like the detectives.”_

_“Yeah, of course you do.” His voice is too fond, dripping with it. “I love the protagonists.” It’s a lie, but he can’t help lying- how do you fall in love with someone who doesn’t know how to be truthful for more than a minute? When he googled it, the internet said it was compulsive, maybe because of ADD, or because of a personality disorder, which might be because of trauma, and he hasn’t asked, but he hears what everyone else says, and he loves it, loves this broken figure on the floor, like him but so much better, bright, burning, brilliant._

_“You remind me of the antagonists.”_

_His eyes light, like that’s the best compliment he could have ever been given, and demon, incubus, golden apple squirms on the floor, their foreheads barely touching. “Really?”_

_Bites his lip. Can’t stop staring. He’s so happy. His heart is overflowing, he’s sad, restless, eager, wants this, wants it forever, never wants to be sober again. He’s so greedy. He wants to dig his fingers into himself, sink past his ribs, pull out his heart and then swallow it again. Restless, itchy. He scratches at his own wrists, and gold hands touch his own, pull them apart, laughing like it’s funny, and he laughs too, lying there, wanting to scratch through his skin, kick his legs out, melt away. “You’re clever.”_

_“So are you.” He’s like an angel on the floor, yokai, fox eyes under a cloak of milky skin and dark hair. Yuki-onna twines their fingers together, looks at him with bright eyes. Ice creeps over their arms. “You’re like…. The sidekick character. The one who’s always smarter than the protagonist. If I were an antagonist, I would be in love with you, not the protag.”_

_His breath catches in his throat. He probably won’t remember this tomorrow. He curls closer, their thumbs brushing against each other, and they are- everything. “Are you really a protag/antag shipper?”_

_“Hell yeah.” That smile curves upward, makes him want to trace it with his hands, with his mouth. “It’s the repressed fag in me.”_

_His breath catches. It’s- it’s too much to say, what they skirt around, dance around, what everyone in school knows and mocks them for, but what they can’t say, what they ignore when they touch each other’s bruises and sit just a little too close. “M-me too.”_

_“You’ve got excellent taste.” It sounds like a lie, looks like a lie, wry and sarcastic in that smile, but he agrees._

_He shifts closer. Their knees knock on the floor. “I… I like the turbulence. It makes it sadder. I think they write them like that, to make it more tragic, but it’s not meant to be brought up in the show.”_

_“Unless one of them is a girl, but that hardly ever happens.” His voice goes a little more dry, and it cuts through the tenderness, and neither of them seem to know if it’s a relief or not._

_He laughs, anyway. “What, Danganronpa isn’t politically correct? I can’t believe it.”_

_“You’re such an asshole when you’re drunk!” Everything broken and wrong to want kicks a leg out, shifts like he can’t keep still, laughs, bumps their foreheads together. It’s accidental, but it makes them both pause, their breath catch, like that little touch of skin is already too much._

_“If I was in Danganronpa,” he hears himself saying, their hands still pressed together, sweaty, dirty, the acne on their temples hot against each other. “I would want to help you. Make all your plans to end the game. I’d want…” he trails off._

_Fox-bride, trickster spirit, almost cruel in how easy it is to love him. He looks like a spirit you should hide from, shrink into shrines and tuck yourself away. “I already want you.”_

_They both laugh, and they sink together, and now it’s their noses touching, their cheeks, they’re laughing into each other’s skin, into their necks. Someone’s mouth brushes against a jaw, drunken and not on purpose, and it’s not- it’s not on purpose, how much they want each other, how much they hate themselves, it’s not on purpose that they ended up on the floor. They don’t mean to find their foreheads together again, to catch their breath as one, to lean in again, don’t mean to do it but do, and it’s not on purpose but it’s so purposeful, and it’s overwhelming, everything, another rush of drunkenness that has them gripping onto each other’s hands like a lifeline._ _  
__It doesn’t count if they don’t remember it the next day. It doesn’t count if it’s just one kiss and then they melt into conversation again. It doesn’t count, the way they stare at each other, heavy and everything, and the way they wake up with their fingers still linked, still on the floor._

Shuichi wakes up gasping and hot all over. He sits up in bed, feeling voyeuristic and exploited all at once.  
The memory strikes him like a fire, and even when most of the details fade- no name to the boy, no face, just tiny details, and he remembers staring at him but doesn’t remember what he sees- even then, he catches himself thinking about it and feels his heart thud unnaturally. Most of the dialogue slips away, too, but it’s there, frustrating, awful, a look into who he was. The self-hatred is gentler than he usually gets, like the presence of this person in the memory softened it somehow. Usually, the slivers of his past life come in disjointed, painful spikes, snippets of conversations that don’t make sense.

It’s not a healthy memory. Whoever they were, they shouldn’t have been drinking, shouldn’t have been talking so excitedly about fucking Danganronpa, and he hates it, hates the person he was, hates how pathetic they seemed, and still…  
He stays in bed all day and wishes he was back in that dream.

\--

“Saihara. Saihara!”

Someone’s shaking his arms, and he partially expects to see Kokichi with a bundle of new plans when he opens his eyes- but it’s Iruma, frantic and wild. “Mm, yeah?” He says, blinking. His body doesn’t feel real yet, and he’s still adjusting to being awake, when she grabs his arm and shoves him, and crawls under his blankets, pulling him with her. “Wh- Iruma!” That definitely wakes him up.

“Oh, shut up, I’m not going to fuck you, this is important- Saihara!” She pulls the blankets tight around them, bundled up together, and shoves their patchwork phone in his face. “Read this!”

Shuichi takes it and blinks at it, the light cutting directly into his eyes. But when he glances up, Iruma looks so anxious that he fights through it and looks down again, forcing himself to get through the words on the screen. 

_to: Season 53 Danganronpa's contestants  
from: Virtual Recovery Foundation  
_ _Subject: re: Urgent assistance needed.  
_ _Survivors of 53,_ _  
__The Virtual Recovery Foundation takes your distress call very seriously. We have had our suspicions about Danganronpa for a while, and we believe you completely.  
Virtual Reality is a delicate technology, and has many potential dangers that Danganronpa fails to properly consider, especially when it comes to traumatizing events and memory reshuffling .  
After thinking over your proposition, we have decided that the best way to release you from Danganronpa's custody is to request a court order for your release. Doing so would deliver you into the custody of our foundation, but that would only be temporary, and as soon as the legal situation grows more stable, we would be happy to release any of you who had wishes to go home- and of course, we would still support those who wished to stay. You would have complete access to legal representation, the internet, and anyone you wished to contact.   
If you're willing to send us further testimony about your experience in Danganronpa's recovery facilities, we would be happy to send it to the authorities. After we do so, please expect further correspondence. Please take care,  
Tsuda Daisuke, victim representative._

Shuichi looks up. Iruma fidgets with her hair. “This- this is brilliant. We need to go find Kokichi.”

“I know, I know, I just-” She takes a breath. “It’s really scary, huh? If they find out… they’ll know I made it, and-”

“Iruma-san,” he says, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Other people know, now. They can’t be too cruel to us without the danger of reciprocation.”

She lets out a heavy breath. “Ah… yeah. I know. I know. I know we need to- I just feel like. Like we should tell the others, first.” She bites her lip. “So they’re not taken by surprise.”

“That might make them complicit,” Shuichi says, quietly, thoughtfully. “And I don’t think Kokichi would-”

“Kokichi’s determination to work completely on his own is what got him killed,” Iruma snaps. “I’m- I’m sick of feeling like he’s always hiding stuff for me. Saihara, if he’d been the one to approach me, I never would have agreed, because he never would have let me in on the plan. I-” She inhales, sharply. “I’ve never been in on the plan before. I just made him stuff because he asked me to. I don’t want to do that again, I don’t want… to be taken by surprise. The others won’t want it, too. We’ve got to tell them before we make any plans.”

Shuichi bites his lip. How does he always end up in these positions? Why does it always come down to him making the tough calls?  
If they go and wake up all the others, they might alert the people watching the cameras that something’s up. If they wait till morning, there’ll be more nurses around- and they need to act quickly, too, he can’t shake the awful sense that if they don’t reply immediately, they’ll lose their chance. Is there any way to get a group of people together without-

“Baseball,” he says, aloud. “Okay. Let’s tell them we’ve got to confer with the others, but their plan sounds good, and we’ll get back to them at… 11.30 am tomorrow. I’ll go and check in with Kokichi after you leave- is that okay?” He tacks on the last bit, a sudden wave of anxiety hitting him. Is he being too bossy? Iruma just said she doesn’t want to be left out of plans, maybe she wants to add something-

But she just nods, not smiling, but looking more hopeful, letting out a little half-laugh. “Sounds like a plan. We’re really sneaking around, huh?”

“This is really kind of fulfilling a boy-detective boarding school mystery plot that I’ve wanted to live in since I was a kid,” Shuichi replies, and he smiles when she laughs again, a little more firmly. He doesn’t mention that it’s really just a false desire, a false memory. She knows. There’s no need to bring it up.

Iruma holds out the phone to him. He blinks. “Take it,” she says. “I… I trust you.” That seems to be too much of a compliment for her, though, so quickly, she looks away. “And I know that Kokichi will be pissy if we don’t let him decide what to type, and whatever, so… take it. Spank him if he’s too much of a brat.”

Shuichi doesn’t even cringe at the imagery, too busy holding the little device almost reverently. Iruma’s trust is a burden, but a warm one, like a basket of matches on his back, lit and warm and trembling. “Thank you, Iruma-san,” he says gently, tucking it under the covers. “I’ll take good care of it.”

“You better, I’m not making you another,” she grumbles, but when she lifts the blanket over them and slips out, she looks quietly pleased. “I’ll tell the groupchat to look forward to baseball tomorrow.”

Shuichi nods, and waves as she leaves, then climbs out of the bed and pulls on a pair of loose, cotton pants. He sits back down on the bed, pulls the blankets around him for warmth, and sits there for a little while, slowly inching the phone under the covers until it bumps his hip. He slides it into his pocket with one hand, the other under his chin, and then he gives a heavy, overly-performative sigh, and stands up, heading for his door. 

When he knocks on Kokichi’s door, it’s only just occurred to him that Kokichi probably has it locked and that he really has no backup plan if he’s not awake…. But it only takes moments for Kokichi to open the door, looking very much like he hadn’t been sleeping. “Shuichi! Is this a booty call?”

“You and Iruma are terrible influences on each other,” Shuichi grumbles, pushing past him to head inside. Kokichi’s string of fairy lights is on, and he’s playing his music again. Shuichi imagines him sitting by the window again, staring out into the dark. “Haven’t you gotten sick of this song yet?”

“Nope!” Kokichi chirps, hopping up onto his bed and sticking out his legs, looking far-too pleased with himself. “I really relate to the lyrics.”

“An empty shampoo, a full garbage bag?” Shuichi quotes, and Kokichi just keeps grinning, like Shuichi’s unlocked some new layer of mystery. “Okay, sure, can you…” He gestures with a hand, suddenly awkward. “Lift up a blanket?”

Kokichi’s grin widens. “Now, this definitely isn’t how I imagined getting Saihara-chan into my bed, but-”

“Oh my god,” Shuichi mutters, crossing over and lifting up the blanket for him. He knows Kokichi doesn’t mean- well, okay, if he means some harm, he probably means to insult Shuichi by implying that he’s interested in… men. He doesn’t know that it’s actually true, he’s just messing around. But old dream-memories have left Shuichi sensitive- he feels like he’s walking around with it written all over his face, that awful shame-love. Desire that doesn’t care where it lands, that sees soft hands and dry laughter and the curve of a cheek and forgets that there’s meant to be more to love than that.  
Shuichi climbs under the bed and Kokichi shuffles up next to them, and the song chirps and runs in circles, and it’s cool even as their breath fills the blanket. Kokichi must not have been in bed. He’s not sure why the thought sticks with him so much, Kokichi upright, standing by his window, a song running through his veins. 

Kokichi shuffles closer. Their knees bump. An odd rush of nostalgia. Shuichi really needs to sleep more. “So, what’s up?” He asks. “I assume you’ve got a reason for waking me up at this ungodly hour?”

“Don’t even pretend you were sleeping,” Shuichi replies, pulling the device from his pocket. He passes it over to Kokichi, lets him run his fingers over it, switch it on, read. “Iruma-san and I think we should tell the others before we message them.”

“No, we should reply immediately,” Kokichi says, still playful, like they’re arguing over chess strategies, but his eyes are a little hard. It’s hard for him to release control of a project, Shuichi notes, watching the way his thumbs curl over the phone. He doesn’t think it’s dictatorship- Kokichi just doesn’t trust any of them not to fuck it up.  
But Kokichi passes the phone back, his jaw tight, and Shuichi knows he doesn’t trust himself, either.

“We will, but we’ll tell them that we need to check with the others before we make a decision,” Shuichi says. “We’ll give them a time, tell them over baseball, and then go and message our- probably our confirmation, right?” Kokichi gives a short nod. “I don’t think anyone will disagree, but you said it yourself- division in the group will only let Danganronpa get their claws in.”

Kokichi laughs, silently, his shoulders shaking once. “And you think they’ll be good to wait? The sooner we act, the more control we keep, the more assertiveness we show. We can’t let them go thinking we’re naive teenagers, or we’ll only be changing captors.”

Shuichi doesn’t comment on his skepticism regarding their assistance, but nods, still holding the device between them. “So we word it assertively. I don’t think that informing them that we decide things as a team will make us look uncertain. If we phrase it right, it’ll just show them that we’re taking it seriously. We’ll make it clear that everything needs to happen on our terms.”

Kokichi’s brow furrows. He stares at the phone for a while, clearly thinking. “Will you let me write it?”

“I can’t think of anyone who would do a better job,” Shuichi says, honestly, offering it out again. Kokichi doesn’t move for a moment, then he reaches, picks up the phone, and starts typing.

Shuichi is quiet, watching. Kokichi types swiftly, decisively, planning ahead even before he’s started, only pausing to make small edits, never to stop and think. When he finally finishes, he scans what he’s written once more, then pushes it back to Shuichi. “Make sure you’re happy with it,” he says, and it’s funny how it sounds like an order even when he’s trying to help.

Shuichi scans the letter- assertive but not aggressively worded, clear that they work as a team, forming a sense of unity that he doesn’t think is actually real, but that he believes even as he reads it. It makes something rise in him, an odd emotion, a wish that they really were so whole, so fixed together.  
He edits it, in a few places, softening language, adding in clarification, detailing their current situation and emphasizing the urgency. He passes it back. Kokichi stares, then edits again. Then passes it back.  
They go back and forth, changing slight details, shifting phrases around, carving words down, forming a letter that is both a request for urgent assistance and an offer of allyship from a worthy group. When, finally, Kokichi passes it back without changing anything, Shuichi signs their names and presses send, and they both watch the email circle and then vanish into the ether. He doublechecks- it’s in their sent folder, waiting innocently, and he rereads it once more. It’s exactly what they wanted.

They sit there, polite, patient. The task is done. There’s more to do tomorrow. Shuichi’s been having so many gentle conversations that he half expects he’ll need to comfort Kokichi- but he can’t ever imagine that situation coming up, any place where Kokichi would either want or open himself to comfort.

“You’re a pretty good leader,” he says, despite that. Maybe he’s getting too used to complimenting people. Maybe he can’t figure out the right way to say _I’m glad we’re working together, finally._

Kokichi snorts, stretching out his legs. He’s so short- and Shuichi’s not the tallest figure, either. Still, Kokichi owns it, makes it part of his charm, plays it up for confidence, character, somehow makes it uncanny and unsettling when he needs it to. “Obviously. You know, that backstory was never really thought out too well. Why on earth would the government ever sponsor a tiny group of criminals?”

“Did you ever suspect it? That it wasn’t real?”

Kokichi is quiet for a moment, and Shuichi wonders if he misstepped- there’s no emotion on his face, but that could mean anything, with him. “When I found Rantaro’s stuff, I wondered… and with Tojo’s story, too. A few times, but I never…” He laughs, and suddenly there’s a complete change in his demeanour, and he’s winking over at Shuichi. “Well, I knew straight away that my backstory was junk. I don’t trust people like that.”

Lie and not lie, Shuichi thinks. He probably… didn’t think it was a lie, his backstory. Or he didn’t want to. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Sometimes I say stuff to Kaede, and I wonder if they’re true- or true in a way that matters, I guess.” Having this kind of conversation with Kokichi is… bizarre. They’re only meant to talk about this sort of stuff when they’re angry, biting at each other, detective and villain, mentioning memories over chess. 

Kokichi seems to think the same, because he crosses his legs, slumping down against a stack of pillows. He always sleeps with his pillows scattered over the bed, Shuichi notes- in a circle of them? Does he feel safer like that? He would’ve thought it would feel… claustrophobic, considering everything. “You’re just not built for adaption, detective. You need to learn to take these things in stride.”

“I think I’m managing pretty well, considering,” Shuichi says, and the exhaustion in his voice is foreign even to him. He quickly tries to cover it up, pull away that bitterness. “I- I mean we all are-”

But Kokichi’s laughing. “Trauma is as trauma does, Saihara-chan.” His eyes grow distant. Shuichi has no idea what he means.

Missing poison bottles. Broken crossbow bolts. Blood seeping from a press- why was he so worried that that wasn’t Kaito? Why did he think that Kaito could ever kill- that an execution would be any better than a death under a press? Why didn’t he just assume that Kokichi had murdered, like he seemed so capable of doing?

“What’s it like?” Shuichi asks, quietly. “I… dying.” He shouldn’t ask it. He couldn’t ask anyone else.

Kokichi’s gaze, distant, foggy, floats back to him. He arches an eyebrow. “What’s it like, living?”

Shuichi couldn’t tell him. He leaves, not long after, and Kokichi is as cheery as ever when he waves goodbye, the song still running _you and me, you and me, you and me._

Shuichi gets two hours of sleep before his alarm wakes him, and then he has to stumble out to breakfast and loudly insist that baseball starts at 11 today, that they all better get ready, and he pretends the resulting clamour doesn’t give him a headache.

“You look like you’re up to something,” Kaede smiles at him, her eyes light, intrigued, trusting, and Shuichi smiles back as his stomach rolls. He tries not to think of the last time he set up a plan, how it had crashed around his ears. Kaito sits on his other side and slings an arm around him, loudly asks if he’s ready to kick Maki’s butt, and she swats his arm lightly, fondly, and looks at him with an expression that makes Shuichi turn away, too tender and private for him to see.  
He spends a while watching those two over breakfast, Maki leaning in close to murmur things, Kaito doing his best to whisper back- just quiet conversation, but he’s still trying to respect her privacy. Maki smiles at one point, her eyebrows pulled up questioningly, as Kaito splutters over a sentence and makes a fool of himself- but it’s still a smile, and it makes Shuichi’s chest feel warm. They’ll be okay, those two, he knows. They’re both so confident, such strong characters, and he feels a little less worried when he looks away, and then immediately feels just as worried when he catches Iruma’s eye as she walks in and sits next to Kaede. They chat casually, Iruma loudly declaring that she’s taking bets on who’ll win today, Kaede trying to insist that she can’t take bets when she’s playing, Iruma arguing that she could sit out- back and forth, back and forth, everyone bantering, and the energy is so high and Shuichi is so anxious. He pulls at the sleeves of his shirt, worms his fingers under the cuffs, picks at the skin around his wrists.

Kokichi doesn’t show up for breakfast, but he's already waiting in the gym, and he gives Shuichi a nod as they enter. Shuichi nods back, and they all divide into their usual teams and begin setting up, and Shuichi doesn't look up at the cameras fixed on them. These cameras do not have audio recording functions- the only ones that do are in the dining hall and lobby, probably due to cost. These ones just have detailed visual recording. The only people who could overhear are nearby nurses, but not when they're surrounded by the sound of movement on the squeaky gym floor, when they're hitting balls and running around and Iruma just set up a pair of speakers to play some truly awful music. "Okay, guys," Shuichi says, loud enough to gather their attention, not too loud to reach past the gym doors. "Kokichi, Iruma and I, we have some stuff to tell you, but you have to promise not to mention it outside of here- and the whole time we talk, you've got to pretend it's just a normal conversation." He finishes with an unnatural smile, several curious stares aimed at him. "Come on, you've gotta relax, okay?"

Kaito slaps a hand on his shoulder. "Whatever you say, bro," he says, cheerful as ever, and his confidence seems to put the others at ease. "Let's keep setting things up while Shuichi explains, okay?"

Shuichi gives him a grateful smile, and he grabs a roll of tape and heads over to help tape down the bases, talking as he walks away from the others. "Iruma-san invented a phone that let us contact people for help."

There's an awkward pause, and he's about to panic, they're all being too obvious, it's too much, but Kokichi's voice pipes up. "Come on everybody, isn't it amazing that such a fat pig could achieve that?"

"You little fucking brat!" Iruma screeches, dropping the stack of balls she was holding and diving after him, and then everyone laughs, relaxing a little.

"Did you really, Iruma-san?" Kaede asks, her face- almost glowing, as if the hope was just hitting her now. "Did you really do that?"

Iruma, Kokichi under her arm and midway through giving him a noogie, pauses and turns a brilliant shade of red. Kokichi manages to squirm away, but she doesn't seem to mind, just tosses her hair back and shrugs a shoulder, suddenly bashful. "O-of course I did! What, did you think that would be any trouble for a girl genius like me?"

"Iruma-san, that's amazing!" Chabashira gushes, her eyes lit up. "You really are a genius, that- I can't believe you did that, that's incredible!"

"I-It was Saihara's idea, blame him!" Iruma stammers, pulling at her hair. She seems pleased, despite her protests, as she heads back over to help Hoshi pick up everything she dropped. 

Kokichi, making a show of dusting himself down, speaks up next. "So, basically, we got an offer of help from this place called the Virtu-"

"The Virtual Recovery Foundation!" Kaede cuts in, her voice bubbling. "I- I read about them online, they've been protesting Danganronpa for years, they'd definitely help us!"

The gym bursts into excited chatter, absolute chaos spilling over everything. Then Hoshi taps a bat on the floor and clears his throat, and, instantly, everyone looks over. He speaks so rarely that you have to listen when he does- and in the gym, he always seems to have an extra layer of authority.   
"Let's flip to see who goes first," he says, quietly. "We oughta actually play, right?"

And so, the girls queue up first and the boys spread over the gym, ready to catch, and the explanation of the plan comes through in quips and banter. Kaito, skidding to third base, shouts a suggestion about causing some minor drama to distract the staff, and it's such a good idea that Kokichi's whoop of support sounds genuine, not just played up for the game. Chabashira sends a ball ricocheting so hard into the other side of the gym that they're forced to chase it everywhere, and she takes the opportunity to casually walk her homerun, explaining the whole time about how a staged argument with Yonaga will look pretty convincing to the Danganronpa staff- and assuring them, as she slides home and gives the artist a smug hi-five, that no hard feelings would be involved. Kaede catches Gokuhara's ball, sending him out, and her triumphant speech is actually all about how they should ask the Foundation to get them on a weekend, because there's less staff in the compound then. Kokichi and Shuichi make a brilliant repeat of their two-teenagers in a trench coat routine, sprinting around the field to much laughter, and Kokichi gives an airy explanation from Shuichi's shoulders about how they'll need to stay on their guard even around the Foundation- that they can't let them view them as political chips, because even charities can be corrupt.   
Iruma asks the others for suggestions for more devices, says she has plenty of leftover parts, as they take a break for kool aid and orange slices. They're- working together, in a way that is so familiar and so new all at once. It's chaotic, fragmented ideas shoved against each other, stuck into something like a plan with the black tape holding down their bases. It's all sports, two teams, combative, unified, their own rules taking over, motivated by nothing but fun. 

Shuichi goes back to his room with Kokichi and Kaede, now, and they tell the VRF that the plan sounds excellent- but they have some things they'd like to make clear.

\--

Shuichi spends the next week in and out of dialogue with their potential rescuers- in and out of bedrooms, lurking under the covers with blue light flickering away. His mind is filled with clarifying language, demands and bargains, what needs to be organized. The energy is tense- Chabashira and Yonaga have faked a fight that's "split" the group, and the staff is busy trying to stop them all from tearing out each other's throats. It's all fake, but the anger that leaks out sometimes, the anxiety that Kaede carries- that's real. They're waiting, in touch every day, detailing the VRF on their situation, the staff's schedules, their various complaints, how unsafe they feel. One day, Kokichi has an absolute meltdown- threatening Danganronpa with everything, telling them how much he hates them, tears pouring from his eyes. The others all watch in horror as they pull him away, but when he looks over his shoulder, he gives Shuichi a wink through watery eyes. Shuichi goes back to his room and finds a note tucked under his pillows- _don't break me out 'til i get my evidence, detective!_ And then a little doodle of Kokichi giving a peace sign, winking up through purple ink.   
Shuichi doesn't break him out, but he worries, curses him, wonders why they can't pull anything off without Kokichi self-destructing.  
And then it's him and Kaede, trying to keep the others together, trying not to sound desperate when they ask when the Foundation can come and get them- getting frustratingly elusive answers, no real truths, their own court-order too confidential for them to learn of.

And then one morning: _Hello, class of 53. Please be ready._  
  


Shuichi hears the chaos from what feels like miles away, lying on Kaede's bedroom floor and staring at her bookshelf. They sit up at the same time, look at each other, and then they're running.  
When they reach the lobby, there's already a few others there- Amami, Kaito, Maki, and a distressed receptionist and several nurses talking to a group of strangers in matching red uniforms.

A man at the front turns to them- mid twenties, curly brown hair, and his smile is warm and bright when he sets his eyes on them. "Hey there, kids. I'm Tsuda, who you've been talking to. Think you're ready to leave soon?"

Shuichi inhales, holds the breath for a moment, then approaches him. "Saihara Shuichi," he says, holding out a hand, and he tells himself that it's his real name, that it doesn't matter if this man doubts him or not. "I've helped write most of the communication we've received, and I did most of the research around our contracts and what they apply to. Is there anything I can help with?"

"Sure is," Tsuda says, like he has the utmost faith in him. He swings a backpack from his shoulder, pulls out a pile of files. "Could you read through that? We'll need one of you to sign it, too, but we also need some of the Danganronpa staff to sign it. You've probably got the most history with that sort of thing, right?"

Shuichi nods, and takes it, and his fingers don't shake even as his heart constricts.The rest of the class filters in as he moves over to stand by Kaede, flicking through the forms. It's all fairly standard- a compulsion from law enforcement to turn their custody over, temporarily, to the foundation. He heads over to the lobby desk to fill in the paperwork regarding their personal consent- date, confirmation, reasons for leaving, all expected and typical. Kaede is talking to the receptionist, telling her sweetly that it's an order from the police, they're just complying, no of course she didn't have any idea this was happening! Kaito's chatting to Tsuda, half excitement, half protectiveness, making sure they're ready to look after his classmates, prepared to take them in. Even Kokichi appears, frog-marched in with a nurse at either side, and he greets the Foundation workers cheerfully, all while smiling like a cat who got the cream.

Tsuda tells them all to go and fetch their belongings at the same time that a wave of Danganronpa staff pour through their door, flanked by even more Foundation members in their red uniforms. It takes only moments for everything to dissolve into chaos.

“Let’s go, go, go!” Kaito yells, his fist in the air. He glances over to Shuichi and gives a sharp nod, then grins again, shouting at the others. “Grab your stuff and get outta here! We’ll keep this sorted-”

“Hold on, hold on, you can’t-” A man steps forward, laughing high in his throat, hands spread out like an offer.

Shuichi steps up to him, his expression as polite as it is cold, his classmates swarming around him, chased by frantic nursing staff. “Would you like to clarify with me?” He asks, channeling every false memory of speaking with the police. When he blinks, he can almost feel his uncle at his side, proud and comforting.

“Uh, yeah,” the man spits. “This has not been approved by Dan-”

“Oh, no,” Shuichi says, calmly, holding out the folder that Tsuda had offered him. “You’re court-ordered to release us, actually, or face further charges regarding unlawful imprisonment. Your treatment of us has been broadcast, and the city’s council has decided to release us into the custody of the Future Foundation.” On a temporary basis, but they don’t need to know that. He’s sure they will, though, as the man scans the files furiously, grabs a radio and calls for even more backup. “Also, any stored security footage you have should be seized soon, so I wouldn’t try to delete anything if you don’t want further inquiry.”

He feels a sick sense of satisfaction as the man stammers, and he leaves him to chew on those files as he hurries to the workers calling him over.

“Saihara, we need to retrieve Shinguji, can you-” 

Shuichi guides the Foundation down the halls of the compound he’s spent so much time in, weaving up the staircase, smiling politely at the nurses and threatening them with legal action until they reach the solitary confinement wings- he leads them down to the longterm resident- Shinguji Korekiyo, written on the door in neat script, and the nurse they’ve dragged with them swipes open the door nervously.  
Seeing Shinguji again is a shock. He looks awful, no mask but no lipstick, his long hair stringy around his waist. He’s still wearing a hospital gown, and the room is bare of any of the possessions that were prepared for the others.  
“It’s okay, Shinguji-san,” Shuichi tells him. “We’re getting out of here.”  
And Shinguji, odd, broken, Shinguji, nods, and stands up with surprising grace despite how awful he looks. He bows his head in thanks to the workers, and they make their way through the halls, an odd group of consorts around an emperor.

When they reach the lobby again, Shuichi checks that he’ll be okay, and then bids him and the workers goodbye and runs to the compound dorms. Shuichi doesn’t care about packing anything himself, so he runs between the others, helping people arrange bags, stuff suitcases full, running back and forth between the Foundation workers and his classmates. He spots Kaede, speaking very sweetly to the nurses, telling them calmly to stay back. Kaito, carrying three bags at once, offering comfort to the nervous ones, Kokichi, weaving his way through officials, causing a chaos that’s impossible to navigate if you don’t know him like they do, lying up a storm, blocking the way down hallways. They make eye contact for a moment, and Kokichi grins, and Shuichi, arms full of clothes, ducks into his room next- retrieves a string of colored lights and a crumpled drawing pinned by his bed.  
Shuichi delivers the new baggage to the open van, but he keeps the picture, drawn carefully in Kokichi’s careful hand, folds it up tight and tucks it away in his pocket. Kokichi wouldn’t want the others to see it, so he hides it and resolves to get it to him later.  
“Saihara, we need you to come and talk to the officials,” Tsuda says, a hand on his shoulder, and he has to shut his eyes tight for a moment because it’s so much like his uncle that it hurts.  
Shuichi thinks of him as they hurry through the halls. His kind eyes, the wrinkles on his face, the way he never resented being landed with a child. He’s not real, but Shuichi loves him even still, the smell of smoke, the dark coat around his shoulders, the puzzles and paperwork that Shuichi grew up reading, throwing himself into. 

He’s not real, but Shuichi still decides to make him proud, lifts his chin higher and thinks of his gruff smile as he steps into the lobby.

“Saihara,” Kumaya greets him, like they’re old friends, his hands clasped at his front. “Doesn’t this seem a little unreasonable?”

“Certainly,” Shuichi agrees, standing with a Foundation worker at his side, the law at his back. “Unlawful, even.”

Kumaya’s eyes glitter. “Danganronpa is only following the code of any reasonable facility caring for the unstable. Any other rehabilitation facility will have a similar code.”

“Solitary confinement as punishment and forced publicity don’t seem up to code,” Shuichi says, anger bubbling in his throat. “Not to mention how impossible it is to rehabilitate when you’re surrounded by the people who hurt you. It’s almost like your recovery is built off nothing but threats.”

“We have done nothing illegal,” he says, his tone just as even. “You have no way to prove your claims, Saihara. This is a case you’ll never win.” 

Tsuda speaks up, hotly. “Danganronpa has been torturing children for far too long. You’re a stain in our society, a disgusting mash of torture porn-”

“And we’ve never had a death on our hands,” Kumaya says, calmly. “This is all on-book. Why do you think we’ve been allowed to go on so long?”

“Because you bribe the gove-”

Shuichi clears his throat before Tsuda can continue further. Kumaya is looking a little less friendly- the important thing is that they get out now. There’s no real way for them to plan here, under the thumb of Danganronpa, constantly watched, constantly paranoid. No way to recover, either, although Shuichi would take a lifetime of trauma if it meant he could make them pay. “I think that Danganronpa’s best move now would be to comply with their court order, right?” Kumaya’s eyes cut through him, and he’s back with his uncle, fifteen years old, staring down a man as he ruins his life, ruins his revenge.  
 _They gave me this trigger,_ Shuichi thinks, and he pushes back the wave of panic. Kaede went off-script, and then he went off-script, and so did Kaito, and Kokichi, and he won’t let their programming control him. He’s not the timid, sidekick detective they wrote. He’s not the protagonist they tried to edit him into, either. He is young, and he is angry, and he is having a panic attack right now, his heart constricting in his chest, far too physical and cruel and shaking through his ribs, but his mind is unsettlingly clean. “I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement later, but surely you know that there’s no way we can fairly agree to any of your demands while we stay here.” He smiles. It cuts into his face. “Have you signed the forms, by the way?”

Kumaya stares him down- tries to, stares like he’s got Shuichi by the neck, and Shuichi thinks of his friends and resists the urge to peel at his skin. Finally, he holds out a hand, the movement sharp and stiff, and the receptionist at his side places the forms in his hand. He looks over them carefully, like he’s still searching for a way out.

Shuichi prays there isn’t. The police were involved with this one, the Foundation is powerful, he’s read it over himself. They just need to get out. They’ll have a fighting chance once they’re out of here, when they can access the internet freely, when they can reach out to lawyers and proper investigators. They just need to get out, and then he can start working properly, rely on the memories _they_ gave him, study the law, find out what kind of evidence he needs to get together.  
He can’t spend a second longer in this hellhole or he’ll lose his mind.

The official holds out his other hand, stiffly, and his assistant passes him a pen. He practically snatches it, then looks up, signing a slow, swooping curve over the paper, staring at Shuichi the whole time.  
“This is war,” Kumaya says, his voice cold and bitter, as he passes it back over. Shuichi lifts his chin.

“Good,” he says, just as cold. “I hope you’re ready to lose.” He swipes his signature over the last form and nods to the receptionist, before turning on his heel and leaving, Tsuda at his side.

\--

They reach their new living quarters, and immediately, a fight breaks out. It’s something stupid, just about who’s bag belongs to who, and he knows it’s just stress manifesting itself poorly, but when Iruma and Chabashira both turn to him expectantly, he realizes that they want _him_ to fix it.

Shuichi is now “in charge” of a group, and he hates it. He really, truly hates it, hates how both Kaede and Kaito step back, go to him for advice, like he knows anything more about the others than they do. There are people he can’t connect with, that he still views as dead, who look at him like he knows what he’s doing. Shuichi stays up all night to comfort Himiko, and he loves her, and he understands, and he is so angry the next day that he hates himself for it. It’s not her fault that she can’t sleep alone, that the night terrors came for her that day, but he’s so tired and he has so much he wants to do, so much he needs to do before he even starts that. 

Somehow, Shuichi is comforting people, telling them it’ll all be okay, and he can’t even multitask while he does it, has to give them all his attention while he thinks about the forms he still has to fill out. The work stacks up, and he and Maki have to help Himiko with her statements, and the whole thing is weighing down on everyone. They need to lean on each other for support. It’s good that people are asking for help. He just hates that it’s somehow ended up being him. Kaede and Kaito are exhausted too, he knows it, and he lets them vent to him and pretends he isn’t feeling the exact same way. He doesn’t spend so much time looking after the others as they do, but he has documents to write and human rights to quote, and he has to find decent comparisons to his own trauma and try and decide when he’ll be ready to talk, who he wants to talk to, if the others want to, too. And then there’s therapy, which is equally unhelpful- probably because he’s too busy being bitter, angry, busy hating the people helping them. He’s so fucking stressed, and everyone keeps telling him he can take a break if he needs, but that’s not an option. If Shuichi takes a break, the others have to take over, and some parts of the investigation grind to a halt. He won’t have Maki and Himiko be forced to rewatch the game, Kaede be forced to rewatch her own death, Shirogane’s betrayal. He won’t have Kaito dragged in front of cameras and pinned into the role of an always-cheery hero, won’t have him feel like he isn’t allowed to be vulnerable. He won’t have their defense against Danganronpa grind to a halt. 

The people who died- their deaths should be respected. They don’t deserve further torment. When Shuichi stepped out of that dome’s rubble, right before the world glitched and went white, he’d vowed that he would make them proud, take their revenge. But if they’re alive, that translates to… he’s going to ease their suffering.  
They’re dead. They’re not, but the died, and dying like that- they don’t deserve this. When Shuichi lived, when Shuichi knew he had survived, he also knew he would carry those ghosts forever. He just didn’t know he’d have to carry their bodies as well.

Shuichi gives interview after interview, chases his friends down and asks them, gently, about their experience about the facility, and he fights people off when it comes to the game itself. Shuichi’s top priority is making sure Danganronpa can’t take them back, speaking out while he can, gathering pieces of evidence after evidence, a folder on his laptop labeled ‘PAST CONTESTANT SUICIDE RATES’, old memories of someone else leaking through the more stressed he gets. His spare time is spent looking after Kaede, and it’s a little more relaxing, somehow. Looking after someone you care about like that, rubbing her back and telling her it’s okay- it’s still tiring, but it’s not as exhausting as everything else. He doesn’t resent it. He does. All he can do is keep going. It’s just for now, it’s just for until they’re legally safe from Danganronpa, just until they can be certain the company can’t get them back. 

Danganronpa’s PR say that they need to be returned for therapy, that they can only be treated by Danganronpa’s staff.  
Danganronpa says that their personalities were actually not applied properly, that this is the people who signed up soaking through.   
Danganronpa says they were built to lie more, this season.  
Danganronpa says that it was following procedure.  
Danganronpa says that Saihara Shuichi is desperate for fame. They pull out an entire paper on his audition tapes and everything they could dig up on his past life, and he doesn’t read it. The others don’t, either, and they tell him so, and for a day, everyone is kind to him and it doesn’t help.  
Danganronpa says that the Future Foundation is doing more harm than good.  
Danganronpa says they’re after money.  
Danganronpa says that the personalities they built are meant to recover easily, that they’re clearly lying. Shuichi clicks onto the folder on past contestants and he sends it to the media team. Danganronpa says this is unrelated. Danganronpa says that it’s due to the fans, not them. Danganronpa says it’s a misleading statistic.

Shuichi doesn’t see Kokichi, but he thinks about him a lot. If Kokichi read about who Shuichi used to be, if he’s doing okay, why does he never see him in the lounge. Did Kokichi get those colored lights before someone else took them, will Shuichi ever be able to get that picture back to him. He instructs the media team not to bother him, and he hopes he’s okay. He would go and see him, tries a few times, but his days are so busy and his nights are filled with restless nightmares, trauma dragged back up. He spots Kokichi walking through the halls, one of them on their way to talk to the legal team, one of them on their way to the baths. He waves, eagerly, and Kokichi seems surprised, and pleased, to see him, and just as tired as he is. For that little passing moment, they chat about the place they’re kept up in, and Kokichi jokes that they’ve traded one prison for another, and Shuichi laughs a little too bitterly, and then he’s hauled off by an assistant to discuss Danganronpa’s latest smear campaign, and he doesn’t see Kokichi again for a while.

He thinks of his uncle, as he picks up books on law and falls asleep reading them, scattered over the desk in his tiny cubicle of a room. His uncle would be proud, he knows. He knows that his uncle was working himself to death, teaching Shuichi to follow in his footsteps- prodigy child detective, parents who never cared. No friends, just an endless list of cases to assist in. Shuichi’s help meant his uncle could take more cases, solve more problems. He became a detective to help people. Shuichi always admired that.  
Does it matter, that his memories aren’t real? The law he knows and the law in these books are almost identical. He has a mind built to analyze, memories of a man who cared for him, who didn’t know what to do with a child as precocious as Shuichi but took him in anyway, who made him meals and paid for his schooling and had a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder the whole time he had to stand by the police and stutter out his deductions.  
Shuichi pulls the crumpled picture out of his desk and smooths it out. Ten smiling clown masks- little details beyond that. A pair of twins, one girl with a sharp bob. One mime is missing a finger. Another wears heart-shaped hairclips in his fluffy bob. Kokichi, in the center, sitting on the shoulders of a tall, willowy figure. None of these people are real, but they look real- a freckle on that girl’s thumb, a scratch on that one’s neck. All the little details that make up a real person, not just an idea or a concept, but a hundred snapshots, a hundred memories to back up their existence. A life that was never lived. Shuichi thinks of cigarettes and paper work and wants to burn them onto his skin.  
It’s still hard to believe it’s not real, sometimes. Shuichi googles his uncle’s name and finds matches with the wrong face, social media accounts all the wrong age, the wrong job. None of them have a nephew they love, they’re looking for, who never said thank you enough because he never knew how. (Does it matter, that he didn’t get to say thank you before he found out his uncle wasn’t real? It’s the same result, no matter what.)

“Danganronpa’s treatment of us was unethical, and frankly, borderline unlawful. We were kept in solitary confinement as punishment, subject to lie detector tests, treated like prisoners, and our therapy focused less on recovering and more on not holding them accountable. They planned interviews and gave us scripts without our consent, and threatened us with further solitary confinement if we didn’t obey. “  
 _“And what of the game itself, Saihara?_ ”  
He takes a breath and scratches at his wrist.

Shuichi steps up, and he takes charge. The others help. The others are brilliant, Kaito speaking passionately about the loss of their friends. Maki gives a quiet but grim testimony about how much her manufactured past has affected her, how the trauma of the game is just another trauma stacked over a miserable, false past, of how she still feels guilt over deaths she’s never dealt. Kaede, crying as she talks about how awful- how impossible it is to recover from being driven to kill, and then to find out how it was all a lie, arranged to make a show more exciting. Himiko, more fire than he’s ever seen in her, sobbing about how her character was _built_ with depression, how Chabashira and Yonaga’s deaths almost made her kill herself. Shuichi weaves their testimonies together. He goes on to talk about past contestants, not just himself, about how Danganronpa takes advantage of struggling teens. How they’re all minors, how the “required permission from guardians” was not only easily faked but also set up abuse victims with an elusive escape, only leading them to more trauma. How the cash prizes targeted the vulnerable. How every personality was designed to break, to suffer.  
It’s like he’s in the game again, class trial after class trial, targeting online articles with the truth, defending his character against everything, coming back to bed exhausted, completely drained.

Shuichi goes back to his tiny dorm room, and he arranges the books there- some of his favourites, some heavy literature, some folders that he doesn’t have room for on his desk. Alphabetical, reverse alphabetical, favourites to least favourites, color-coded. The files stick out like a sore thumb, and the order never seems right, the law books too wide to fit properly, too obvious. His bookcase sits next to his desk, one of three furniture pieces in his room. It draws his eye every time he enters, the sense of wrongness encasing him- like there’s a right answer to it, some order to be found here. He stares at his plastic pot plant and thinks of Kokichi. He scratches his wrist.

He falls asleep and he dreams of death, of blood dripping from floorboards and pianos and hydraulic presses, and he wakes up even more determined to avenge his friends, even more tired, still carrying every death on his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the VRF are not real. if you have trauma resulting from an experience in virtual reality, call the police.)


	6. as a result of dying,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shuichi shifts in his seat, spinning just a bit, his feet dragging on the floor. “Kokichi,” he says, and he stops, and Kokichi thinks /say my name say my name say my name  
> “Kokichi,” he says, again. Their eyes are fixed, something feverish reflected in Shuichi’s. “Kokichi.”
> 
> Ouma-kun , exasperated and warm. Ouma-kun, over a game of rock/paper/scissors. Ouma, sighed, confused, fond, bandaging his fingers. Ouma, you’ll always be alone, Ouma no one here trusts you, Ouma take the remote-
> 
> “I’m not dead,” he says, like he’s looking for reassurance. “I’m not dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI ITS ME. THIS CHAPTER WAS FUN TO WRITE! IM DRUNK. FUN CHALLENGE: FIGURE OUT WHICH PARTS WERE WRITTEN DRUNK (HARD MODE: GRAMMARLY EDITION) I DO NOT WRITE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. YOU'RE ALL WONDERFUL MWAH I OWE MY LIFE TO YOU
> 
> also: sobered up for this: this is not an accurate depiction of hallucinations. im taking a little artistic license, a little dramatization of how trauma can manifest, and a little scifi bullshit about VR. on that note, people who experience hallucinations or delusions are not dangerous because of that and deserve ur support and respect.

This new prison is fine, Kokichi guesses. A step up from the hell that was the Danganronpa compound, for sure.

One major benefit: no more shitty therapy! They offer it, of course, but Kokichi immediately turns it down with an extremely convincing, polite performance, about how he’s really fine, he’s going to take a step back from the whole situation. The Foundation takes it at pretty much face value- a few of their younger members look at Kokichi like they think he's smarter than them (which he probably is), like he's some kind of overly-powerful genius (which he did a pretty good job of pretending to be.) It makes it pretty easy to convince them he's fine, that he devoted himself to helping the others escape and is stepping back now.

And he does. Step back, that is. Kokichi will do a lot of things, but he will not open up about his past, or his trauma, for the whole world to see. He did his part, he helped them escape, arranged careful text messages to the Foundation and sought out support. And now he's good, you know? He doesn't really care about what the others do, but he has no interest in joining them. Particularly not when he can see how much it drains them, to talk about the experience, deal with the slander everywhere. 

Kokichi stays quiet, sticks to his cubicle of a dorm room, keeps his head down, and pretends that a part of him doesn't hunger for it- the drama, the attention, the mystery to solve. He wants to- do something, do anything, he is frustrated beyond words and pent up like he's on far too many mood stabilizers. He was built to unravel mysteries, to get almost-but-not-quite there, and he hates it, hates how restless he is without something to do.  
He watches Shuichi bury himself in legal documents and the drama of the others, and he knows that the boy is going to kill himself with work, and he knows that Danganronpa didn't design him to do anything else. This is what they get, mystery and plot and design and then nothing, and all of a sudden these grand caricatures are dropped into a real world with no real point to it. Kokichi has no followers, no mastermind to defeat, nothing but options and schemes and people to trick and jobs to pick up. 

Life stretches ahead of him, so tantalizing, so boring, and he wonders if it'll ever feel real. If he'll ever feel alive again. 

He sees it in the others, too, in Momota's speeches that lose the point to them after a while, trail off, drop into something about designing their own futures and end quicker than he planned. In the way Amami goes a little glazed when he talks about his own past, a family hidden behind fake memory after removed memory, behind a veil of death. Yonaga, as insistent about her false god as ever, quiet when he needles her about the afterlife. She can tell him it's real all she likes, that they didn't really die, but it doesn't change the way her eyes drift, how her expression turns contemplative for a moment.

Kokichi sticks mainly to his own bedroom, but he chats with the others when he sees them- bothers them, really, inconvenient and irritating. Nobody can decide whether or not to take him seriously without Shuichi softening his snark, sitting at the other side of a game board, opposite sides of the gym. But Shuichi is busy playing the hero again- they make eye contact, briefly, as Shuichi goes to work and Kokichi goes to bed (nine am, four am, ten pm, it's all the same.) Shuichi looks exhausted. Kokichi knows his own face is unreadable. Shuichi smiles anyway.  
He goes back to bed and he writes up testimonies he would rather die than let people read, and he makes a list of his top ten personal grievances with Danganronpa. He rewrites his own murder-suicide plan, just for fun, tries to adjust the script, see if there was any way he could have pulled it off. It's fun. It's light hearted. It's quirky. He tries out different plans- killing himself in the traps in the sewer, in Harukawa's lab, blowing himself with Iruma's inventions, an elaborate trap involving poison gas and spears and a whole lot of chance that he ends up discarding halfway through because it's too ridiculous to even play with. He likes to have control, in these rewritten plans, not rely on chance. None of this 'Momota presses play on the video and the press' bullshit, none of this 'Momota goes off script' (because he fucking noticed, the few times he ad-libbed. Not to mention when he fucking jumped out.) In some plans, he drags Harukawa to the hangar. In some, Yumeno. Neither of those two work, though- one too stubborn, would have hated him too much to ever comply, the other too cowardly to pull it off. Kiibo was out of the question. Shirogane even more so.

Kokichi writes one plan where he gets Shuichi to kill him, to lie for him, and the one person who could catch him is the one working on his side. Their last exchange isn't "thank you," in those awful sewers, that fake world burning outside. They get a little more closure, in the hangar, Kokichi lying on his back, Shuichi studying the script with his intent expression, furrowed brow, all careful focus, devotion to the very last. Kokichi tells him he's the only one he came close to trusting. Shuichi laughs, a little teary, and tells him he's crazy, and Kokichi goes out screaming, that awkward pinstripe jacket tight around his shoulders. Shuichi knows that there's nothing more important than ending the game, and he lies through his teeth, performs like a champion, coaxes Harukawa into playing along, leads that godawful bear on a wild goose chase. Speaking in Kokichi's voice, he draws Shirogane out, coaxes her sweetly, doesn't give her a chance to regain control of the script.

That plan gets tossed right next to the poison gas one. Too much wish fulfillment. He writes another script for Momota.

\--

_“Hey,” Kokichi said, all trussed up in white leather straps, a chessboard around his neck._

_Detective protagonist had looked up at him, frowned. “What do you want?” He’d asked- not as cold as the others, by far. A note of question even in the rebuttal._

_Kokichi pouted, pretending to wring his eyes out. Masks on masks. He’d been pretending to cry more after the trial- making it more of his routine. Most of the others didn’t care what masks he swapped in and out, but Saihara took note of things like that. He could see, sometimes, when the detective noticed something a little off, when his brow tensed for just a moment. But he always dismissed his concerns about Kokichi- bigger fish to fry, right? Too busy doing whatever Momota thought was best._ _  
__Pathetic. So much brain, only to tie it to the nearest person with half a spine._

_“Wow, you really are pathetic.” Kokichi had said, crossing his arms behind his head. “Shouldn’t you be yelling at me like your darling Momota- oh wait, you two are still fighting, huh?”_

_Saihara’s mouth twisted, and he looked away. Sometimes Kokichi wondered if he was the mastermind simply because he was the one who strayed from his role the most- playing hero in trials and sidekick outside of them. He should learn from the others, stick to what he’s good at. “What do you want?” He repeated. He looked so tired._

_Kokichi smiled, glinting, cheshire. “Just wanted to talk to my favourite detective! I meant what I said, you know. I like you a lot.”_

_“It’s not mutual.” So cold! Saihara turns away again, picking up his book once more. Kokichi swayed sideways, tilting his head._

_“Aw, you aren’t even going to banter a bit? But we worked so well in that last trial!” And the previous one. And the one before that. Kokichi, dropping hints only Saihara was smart enough to spot._

_Saihara turns a page. Ignoring him. Kokichi hates being ignored._ _  
__He leans in close, staring, his breath puffing over the pages. It’s so fun being close to Saihara. He pretends to be reading, but really, he’s watching his eyes shift over the pages, that expression shift._ _  
__Still ignored. Boring. Bored._

_Kokichi stands up sharply. Swings his hands at his sides. “Well, see if I let you in on my murder plans.”_

_Saihara’s brow twitches._

_(Kokichi thinks of his notebook filled with murder-suicides he doesn’t want to have to face. All take place in the hangar. Sometimes an exisal is involved. Usually, it’s the press. It’s so obvious, gleaming- set up for murder. What an awful way to go. But it has to be the hangar, easy to keep the exisals nearby, the convenient little prison cell stashed there. It’s just the worst! Like it was made perfectly for him, waiting, calling out. The shiny metal of the press reminding him that if he fucks this one up, that’s all that waits._ _  
__He can’t think of anything worse than Saihara being involved, his expression grim and determined and far too apologetic as he watches from the controls. He’d probably apologize a lot, ha. He’d hate having to kill someone, but he would. If it was to end the game, he would. And he’d lie well, too, when the time came.)_

_But Saihara doesn’t look up from his book, and Kokichi keeps staring at him. Good, good, no death on his hands, except Kaede’s, and that was the bravest thing Kokichi had ever seen. Too smart. Too good. You can either be smart or good, and somehow Saihara is both, and that makes him slow._

_“Bye bye, Saihara-chan,” he sings. He waits a moment longer before he leaves. He’s not sure what he wanted from that exchange, but he didn’t get it._

_Kokichi goes back to his room and sets up his stash of technology, and he thinks of Miu, and he thinks of Gonta, and he thinks of Saihara telling him he’ll always be alone._

_He laughs, because there’s not much else to do._

\--

One day, Kokichi is in the kitchen, watching his popcorn pop, covered in overly sugary syrup and sealed again, Gonta walks in and immediately engages him in shy, eager conversation, and Kokichi is trapped there as the microwave counts down. He has to pretend his skin isn't crawling, that every one of Gonta's smiles doesn't seem fake, that the way he asks if he wants to come and watch some documentaries with him doesn't hurt more than- more than anything.  
Kokichi doesn't let himself think about Gonta too much. It doesn't go anywhere except self-hatred, which is almost as useless as self-pity, and just as indulgent. He doesn't allow himself much of either emotion, but he can't help it when it's applied next to wide, shining eyes and a naive smile.

Kokichi returns from Gonta’s awful, overwhelming forgiveness, and collapses in his bed. He falls asleep for about, hm, two days, and then he stumbles out to drink water directly from the bathroom taps, only stopping when he thinks he’s going to be sick.  
Returning to his room, he finds someone sitting on his desk.

“Huh,” Kokichi says, staring at himself.

Himself looks back. They have black hair, no dye in the ends, a nervous tremor to their hands. Their hair still sticks up like his does- the fidgeting with it apparently carried through. The world feels like it melts around them.  
They smirk. 

“Wow,” they- him- not-him says, tilting its/his/their head in a curious angle. “We look so much cuter now!”

“Fuck off,” Kokichi tells himself. He takes another moment to look at them, lip curling. They’re not wrong- this blurry vision of his past self looks like a washed out version of him- like it hasn’t been run through photoshop yet, just pasted right onto the magazine. Its skin is flat and blotchy, the freckles like blemishes, a bandage on its cheek, its stubby fingers all scraped up. Superficial differences, really, but they add up. It’s probably not real, though, just heightened insecurities or something. Would Danganronpa really bother to change their physical appearances even when they were being dropped into VR?  
(Yes. Yes they would.)

Not-him stretches out his legs, dressed up in a typical black uniform, swinging his feet casually. “You’re the one imagining me.”

“Okay, this is-” Kokichi steps further into the room, the door swinging shut behind him. He barely hears it. “This is one step above imagining.” Because he sees them, knows it’s not real but sees it anyway, is half-convinced that if he reached out his hand would land on their skin. “This is a full on, crazycakes, absolutely insane hallucination. I’ve just lost it.”

“They’re triggered by stress,” not-Kokichi says, idly, like it’s nothing much at all. “You should get medicated for them, though. I lied about it on the forms, because you’re not meant to go into the VR if you get visual ones, but I figured it would be fine.”

“Yeah, well, it was a nasty surprise to suddenly get super vivid hallucinations that you have no memory of experiencing, ever,” Kokichi snaps. He has no pity for this boy, sitting there, quiet and pathetic, smug in a way that is far too familiar for his comfort.

Not-Kokichi shrugs. “If it helps, it’s just the visual hallucinations that are the problem- this whole dialogue is just you playing along. I never heard voices or anything, so I’m not sure what this whole thing is. You don’t really see people like this- well, sometimes. But they’re not meant to talk. Not like this.”

Kokichi screws up his hands, anger biting at his heart. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s one of the things that happens after you go into VR with visual hallucinations,” he snaps. “Thanks, by the way. Great to know that my fucked brain got even more fucked with.”

Another shrug. A smile that’s a little too much like a smirk. “Not my problem anymore, right?”

This really adds another level to hating yourself. “What do you want?”

“Me?” He tilts his head, puts on a cute expression- Kokichi’s cute expression, the naive one he always uses to piss people off. “I’m in _your_ mind. What do you want?”

“You to fuck off?” He decides to ignore them. Kokichi stomps over to his bed and flops down, not looking over to his desk. Not-Kokichi hums.

“Sorry. I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice in it. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

“You’re not real,” he hisses, burying his face in a pillow. He can tell they’re not real, because their voice sounds the same here as it did by the door- his voice. 

His voice crinkles around a smile. “Did people like me?”

“No,” Kokichi tells them, immediately. “Everyone hates me.” He doesn’t wallow in self-pity, he asked for it. 

“Please, I don’t mean the other contestants.” Contestants- like he still thinks it’s a game. “I mean the audience.”

Kokichi’s stomach rolls. “I don’t know,” he lies. He does know. The audience has very strong opinions on him. Some people hate him, either the sugar sweet fakers with pastel pink gore blogs, who whine about how mean he was on their fan account for the murder games, or the people who openly love that murder game, who think he was stupid for ever trying to stop it, hate that he kind of succeeded. Some people do like him, though. Some people like him too much.

“I thought about it a lot,” not-Kokichi says, dreamily. “All the attention. If they hated me, that’s fine too, you know?”

“You’re fucked up.”

“You killed three people.” It’s sweet, charming, bitter, just more proof this ghost isn’t real. “How did you die?”

“You _know_ that,” Kokichi says, frustrated enough to sit up. “You know that I killed people, know that I died, how do you not know-”

“I only know what you tell me,” it tells him, finger against its lips, _his_ gesture. “You never think about that.”

Kokichi throws a pillow at his desk. It misses, wildly. “Fuck off.”

Not-Kokichi laughs, like he’s bothering a friend, swinging his legs off the desk, shaking his head. “Okay, okay. How is he?”

“How is who?” Kokichi asks, beyond angry at this point. He’s this close to fighting a hallucination/memory of himself, slashing his neck just to make sure he kills every last remnant of this gross fucking creature living in him. 

Ghostly, it tilts his head. “I guess you did forget, then.” 

“I forgot- you made me forget everything!” He spits, almost screeches. “Did you really think this would be better? We’re the same person! You’re still experiencing this, still feeling everything, you just think it’s different! You’re not- you’re not separate from me, you are me, you bitch, you fucking bitch, you piece of shit-” He’s falling forward, doesn’t remember when he left the bed. He hits the floor, smashes his chin into it, and his own laughter echoes in his ears.

“This is even more pathetic,” Harukawa says. He squeezes his eyes shut. He hates being alone. He never was alone, before. He had nine other people, worth dying for, worth living for. A box of cards, a few jokers, cheap spray paint and clown masks. 

“You okay, boss?”

That’s just cruel. Kokichi thumps his head against the door- their voice is enough to make his throat close up, make his blood run, make everything shut down.  
One ghostly memory, something that isn’t real, one member of ten, leans closer to him, and he can’t feel their body heat, can’t hear their clothes rustle, but he can imagine it so clearly that it hurts. “It’ll be okay,” they say, softly, too soft, aching. “C’mon, can you get up? You bit your cheek when you fell. You gotta take care of yourself, boss.”

“What, because you can’t?” He asks, and it’s too much like a sob, too broken. Kokichi shoves himself up on his elbows, looks up angrily, and he sees a person there he doesn’t know, out of focus, wobbling. Just another fucking hallucination, the light glitching around them. 

“We really fucked up, didn’t we?” It tells him, it’s voice surprisingly quiet, surprisingly familiar, and he can’t disagree.

He’s laughing when he lays his head back down, pressing his cheek to the ground. Fading, imaginary, he imagines someone laying across from him, someone he loved, looking at him tender and broken and everything he wanted but couldn’t have.

Not-Kokichi leans over him. “Well,” he says. “I guess one of us did die, at least.”

\--

It’s mid-afternoon, and Kokichi’s stumbling through the halls, his heart still pounding, his jaw still aching from where it hit the floor. He can hear conversation, distantly, faintly, and at one point, standing at the crossroads of the hallways, in the child-sized clothing provided for him, he looks down the length of it and spots Shuichi at the other end, walking with a pair of faceless Foundation workers. He’s talking, looks angry, tired, and for just a moment, he looks over. Their eyes meet, and for a moment everything dims, and it’s like they’re standing in the streets of a city, dirty cobblestone instead of linoleum, streetlights buzzing above their heads. Moths around the streetlights. Rain reflecting orange on the blue sidewalk. Night above their heads. A detective, streets away, coat and nicotine addiction, his hat tucked low. A thief, rain dripping over his mask, over his white uniform.  
The detective bows, a sad sort of acknowledgment, and then his gaze flickers away again. He continues talking as he walks, wrapped up in a case, and then it’s just the Foundation’s quarters and Kokichi is nothing useful.  
He continues down the falls, and is it a hallucination if he can still smell the night air? What counts as real, anymore? 

Most people are out at the moment, grouped together, doing interviews, making plans, but Kokichi, regretting it even as he reaches the door, knows of one person who never leaves his room. He takes a breath, then knocks.

Shinguji Korekiyo, resident creep, looks up from a book. He’s hunched over in his bed, spine crooked like a rice-picker. His mask is back on (good sign? Bad sign? He probably doesn’t want to murder people anymore if they’ve got him out near the others, right?) but his dark hair is braided, two twintails hanging down over his chest. It’s enough to make him look a little softer when he looks up, although the lack of eyeliner probably helps with that, too. “Ouma-kun,” he says, surprise evident in his voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

This is probably a bad idea, Kokichi thinks, slipping inside and closing the door behind him. “Just wanted to check up on you,” he lies. “See how my favourite goth was adjusting to the great outdoors.”

Shinguji quirks an eyebrow. “I haven’t been outside in a while, but I was never all that fond of it, anyhow. Can I help you?”

Kokichi doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to, just walks over and trails his hand over the empty desk. Creepy. Super creepy. He doesn’t care, though, doesn’t mind how Shinguji’s gaze follows him like a monster. “Do you still think you’re possessed, or whatever?” Deceptively casual. He glances out of the corner of his eye.

Shinguji’s whole body has gone tense, his hands (ungloved, unbandaged now) digging into the pages of his novel. He breathes heavily for a few moments, and Kokichi wonders, dry humor to his internal narrative, if this is how he actually dies. Unplanned, risky, just an off-hand comment at the wrong time. It’s kind of how he expected to go, before… everything.  
But Shinguji clears his throat, forces his voice into something as steady as he can make it. “I… don’t believe so, no. But I still. Still hear her sometimes. I just have to ignore it.” He closes his book, folds his hands over it. “I assure you, I have no intent to kill. My philosophy within the game, it’s… they made some edits after I awoke, just to make certain. Legal safety, I’m sure, but it served it’s purpose.” He doesn’t look any less miserable, though.

“You hear her, huh?” Kokichi leans against the wall, picks up a pen from the desk, twirls it between his fingers. “Did this happen before the simulation, or…?” It’s weird calling it a simulation. Calling it anything other than The Game.

Shinguji frowns, curling his bare fingers into his blanket. “...No. I’ve already spoken to Saihara-kun about this, actually. He believes the fact that Danganronpa fabricated this is a fair reason to point to their abuse of us, and I can’t say I disagree.” He tilts his head, a hand coming up to press against his cheek, almost cradling it. Those dark braids drape around his hand. “Besides, I believe there was something in our contracts about Danganronpa not allowing people prone to hallucinations or seizures into the simulation?”

“Yeah, well, they fucked up with that one,” Kokichi says, staring down at his hand as he performs a neat spin with the pencil. He wonders if Shinguji’s taking notes about how amazing humanity is to be able to pull off cool pencil stunts like that. His only answer is silence. He doesn’t want to look up, so he keeps talking, spinning the pencil between his fingers. “I’m getting some super fucked up hallucinations. The mirage of my past self told me I got them before I signed up, and I lied about it.”

Shinguji blinks. “You- you hear them, too?”

“Not like you do,” Kokichi says, frustrated, looking up. Frustrated, both that Shinguji clearly didn’t listen, and that he would imply they are at all similar. “I see them, as well. People. They talk to me. I don’t get… weird lights or stuff. And it’s more like… I guess I’m imagining what they say, but I see them talking. I don’t know.”

Shinguji recovers quickly, his hand slipping over his mouth, over his mask. “Apologies,” he says, quietly. “I… that is rather unusual,” he says, and the light that glints in his eyes is too familiar. Talent not quite stomped out, huh? It’s like shoving a piano in front of Akamatsu, only without the layer of trauma. “Hallucinations, to my knowledge, generally come in one sensory urge, not two… That sounds more like a delusion, really, but you’re aware they’re not real.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Kokichi, ignoring the part of him that kind of really does think his past self found a way to contact-slash-punish him. 

“And you signed up despite Danganronpa’s warnings? Interesting.” Shinguji stands up, walks over, and Kokichi has to resist the sudden urge to shrink away. He sits down at the desk, brushing his braids back over his shoulders and opening up the laptop there. “Do you mind if I ask some questions?”

“As long as you don’t share the answers,” Kokichi jokes, trying to pretend like this doesn’t feel like the weirdest therapy session ever. 

Shinguji shakes his head. “I respect your privacy, Ouma-kun, please. Do you hear the voices or just imagine them?”

Kokichi shifts, uncomfortably. He’s about two seconds away from running out of here. He can’t believe he’s coming to a serial killer for advice, but he couldn’t think of anyone else as fucked up as him. “I… can’t really tell.” The more he thinks about it, the more layers of confusion slip in. “I mean, I hear them? But looking back, I couldn’t really tell you.”

Shinguji’s eyes are like amber, gooey, distracting, dangerous. “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” he says, calmly. “Neurodivergency happens in every species, and hallucinations are no more harmful than any other symptom.” 

“Sure, if we hadn’t already established that these are like, super bizarre psychopath hallucinations,” Kokichi agrees, pleasant and relaxed, not embarrassed at all. Shinguji makes a soft sound in his throat. 

“Looking online, there’s some indication that extended periods in virtual reality can cause an increase in visual hallucinations when leaving- something about the brain struggling to decipher reality and projection. But there’s nothing about how memory alteration could contribute to that, or anything about auditory hallucinations becoming more common.” Shinguji sits back from the laptop, turning it to face Kokichi, as if the blocks of text will be anything more than irritating.

“To be fair, I am taking a hallucination of my past self that I might be imagining the dialogue to at its word that I didn’t experience shit like this prior to the VR,” Kokichi points out.

Shinguji sighs, turning the laptop back to himself. “Well, it’s better than nothing, and definitely worth considering. There’s no record here of people who experience hallucinations joining Danganronpa. Speaking of, shouldn’t they have screened for that sort of thing?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember signing up!”

Shinguji makes another soft sound, almost like a chuckle. “Perhaps you should check in with Saihara about that. I know he’s been researching past contestants far more extensively than I.”

Kokichi doesn’t really want to tell Saihara, with his piles of paperwork and mediation position in their fragile little group, about his fucked up delusions. “Yeah, sounds like a good idea,” he nods, pressing a finger to his cheek, pretending to really consider it. 

A quiet hum. Shinguji’s eyes are liquid when Kokichi meets them. He is unsettlingly calm, like he always has been. “I do hope things improve for you, Ouma. I know this can be a source of stress, and you have enough on your plate at the moment, I feel.”

Kokichi resists the urge to run for the door. God, he’s so creepy. And sad. He can’t tell if he’s terrified or filled with gross pity. The pity is worse, frankly. “Yeah, you too. From one villain to another.”

Those snake-like eyes seem to glitter for a moment, and then they seem far too sad. “I don’t think you were ever a villain, Ouma-kun,” he says, quietly. “You should give yourself more credit.”

“And you, too!” Kokichi says, too high-pitched, suddenly filled with panic, a concern that isn’t quite for his life but for his dignity, his sense of mind. “That trick with the see-saw was really brilliant. Sorry I ruined it by concussing myself!”

He bolts before he can see Shinguji look even sadder, and the odd sense of pity sticks with him for the rest of the day. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

\--

Protagonist Detective is busy, always, never in his room when Kokichi checks, out in the lounge stopping fights or in the main section of the Foundation quarters, being productive, saving their skin. Kokichi breaks into his room, one night, and he’s not there even though it’s two in the morning and everyone else is either asleep or busy having night terrors.  
(The next morning, he hears from Akamatsu to Momota that he was going over potential charges with the representative again.) 

But one night, Kokichi gets lucky, knocking on his door at nine pm. Someone calls out wearily, and he pushes it open.

Shuichi is at his best when he’s exhausted, pushed a little too far, sad enough that it shows all over his face. An artist’s blue period, his eyes drained, his hair all sticking up, too tired to lie. That’s why it makes Kokichi’s stomach turn when he looks up and smiles, just a small thing, but it’s so much energy to fake, and he looks- genuinely pleased to see Kokichi. 

“Hey,” he says. “I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve spoken to you.”

“It has,” Kokichi tells him, moving over to sit on his bed. His own smile comes easy, fake or not. His relationship with reality has grown a little complicated, lately. “But you’ve been super busy, haven’t you! All that protagonist work sure sounds hard.”

Immediately, Shuichi’s face falls. It’s a relief, frankly, to not have that too-honest smile aimed at him anymore. They aren’t friends. Shuichi is friends with Akamatsu and Momota, the bright-eyed, tragic heroes on the television, or Yumeno and Harukawa, the determined survivors. He’s not friends with Kokichi. “I would really rather we didn’t fight,” he says, and it comes out a little gritted.

“Oh, but it’s so easy!” Kokichi chirps, and it’s true. It’s so easy and hard to push Shuichi’s buttons. He doesn’t say the sort of things he says to Kokichi to anyone else, bitter and a little-too personal, addressing their failures while avoiding them all at once. (A part of Kokichi is possessive over it, hungry to keep that bitterness for himself, the times when Shuichi is at his most honest. He’s not a liar, the detective, only when he needs to be, but it’s still good to peel back the layers of privacy from his darker thoughts.)

Shuichi sighs, turning on his chair. “Kokichi, I missed you,” he says, a little too honest now. “And I’m- I’m tired, really tired, and you know it, and I know it, and I don’t want to…. Argue about stupid stuff like we always do.”

Kokichi nods in agreement. “We always do, though.”

“Well, we could try not to?” Shuichi’s voice is tight. His room is even messier than Kokichi’s.

“Why are all your books on the floor?”

Shuichi glances over to his empty bookcase, the pile of books in front of it. He stares, slowly, like he doesn’t understand why Kokichi doesn’t immediately know why all his books are on the floor. “I can’t order them right,” he says. “It always feels… wrong.”

The quirks of the brilliant, he guesses. “Maybe having any order to them is wrong? Maybe they’re meant to be out of order.” A bookcase, lived in, books taken out and put back when they’re needed. Familiar chaos. Kokichi thinks about Shuichi in his own house- an apartment, maybe, with an old kettle and a bookcase in every room, organized by law, by case files, by fiction, by coffee-table photography books that are really just for guests. Other people walk through that house, slip the books into the wrong places, leave them on tables and beds, and the original order is changed with time.

But real Shuichi lives in a cubicle in the headquarters of a charity group, and he grimaces. “No, the chaos would distract me, and I need to find some of the files urgently… nevermind. It’s dumb.” He pushes the hair back from his forehead. 

Kokichi stares at him. Shuichi stares back. The bags under his eyes are so heavy- who’s letting the detective work himself to death? Aren’t they meant to be all about unity? He wants to laugh at him, call him a simp, and idiot, tell him he’s stupid for trying to save the day, solve Danganronpa, keep the group together, play at both detective and leader.  
What comes out is “you should let me help.”

Shuichi looks just as surprised as Kokichi feels. Immediately, he wants to retract it, too honest, too obvious, but then Shuichi says, “I can’t ask for that.”

“You’re not asking, dickhead, I offered. I’m losing my mind here, Saihara, I need some kind of project.” Kokichi finds the laugh then, but it comes out like its aimed at himself. “I’m not…. I’m not all together with the legalese that you lot are doing, but I’m good at making plans.” He was designed to make plans- wasn’t designed to make them so well. Danganonpa couldn’t beat his plans. Shuichi could, but they’re on the same team now.  
Are they? Are they ever going to be on the same team? Their goals might be adjucent, but-

“You are,” Shuichi says, quietly. “I- I was inspired by you. I’m trying to make you proud.”

“Well, son, I guess you’ve finally earned my affection,” Kokichi jokes, but he knows what Shuichi means. He can see how he stares at him, like he’s a ghost. He’s probably the one life that’s hardest to accept- not even a body to be seen, just blood on the floor.

Shuichi shifts in his seat, spinning just a bit, his feet dragging on the floor. “Kokichi,” he says, and he stops, and Kokichi thinks s _ay my name_ _say my name_ say my name  
“Kokichi,” he says, again. Their eyes are fixed, something feverish reflected in Shuichi’s. “Kokichi.”

 _Ouma-kun_ , exasperated and warm. _Ouma-kun,_ over a game of rock/paper/scissors. _Ouma,_ sighed, confused, fond, bandaging his fingers. _Ouma, you’ll always be alone, Ouma no one here trusts you, Ouma take the remote-_

“I’m not dead,” he says, like he’s looking for reassurance. “I’m not dead.”

“I’m glad you’re not,” Shuichi says. He can’t tell if it’s the wrong thing to hear. It makes him _wild_ , though, makes him shudder in his seat. “Kokichi, I-” And then he doesn’t finish whatever sentiment he was going to follow through on (meaningless, too meaningful, too much to know), but stands up and picks up his laptop, and he carries it over to the bed and sits down next to Kokichi, tilting the screen back so they can both see it. He clicks through multiple tabs, finds an organizational site and then goes scrolling through documents, and he is so close to Kokichi, so present. “It’s- the work makes it easier and harder all at once,” he says, and he’s talking about himself but it applies to Kokichi, and he must know it does, because he’s pulling up a document and pushing the laptop onto Kokichi’s knees and telling him to put in his email.

Kokichi types in the address the Foundation arranged for him, and tries not to let the machine tumble from his knees. “We were built to solve things.”

Shuichi huffs a soft laugh, his gaze going unfocused now that the laptop is away from him- like it’s what was tethering him to the room. “Yeah.” Silence. “I’ve been watching the old seasons.”

He’s not sure what to say to that. Cool way to self-harm? How’s that retraumatization? Is that for your legal case? “What do you think of them?”

“I think…. Our season was really off-book.” When Kokichi presses enter, sends the documents to himself, tangles himself up in another project, he looks up, and he sees something like a smile on Shuichi’s face. “You and Kaede… you really threw them off.”

Sick satisfaction. Something warmer. A compliment that manages to prick at his stone heart. “Please, you did, too. It was clear Momota was meant to be the backup. I still have no idea how someone as shy as you became the protagonist.”

“The trials, I guess. The protagonist always has to direct them, and you were being vague, and Kaito-”

“Was too dumb?”

Shuichi nudges his shoulder, a surprisingly tame gesture. “That’s my best friend, you know.”

“I thought Kaede was?”

Shuichi pauses, thinking over it. “Yeah. I guess they’re all just as important, just in different ways. Kaede is my best friend, and Kaito is my bro, and Maki is kind of an older-sister figure, and Himiko is a younger-sister, and-”

“What am I?” It’s the worst question, dangerous, awful, stretching through the air, making his heart thump loud in his ears. He doesn’t want to know. He never wants to know what Shuichi thinks of him.

Shuichi smiles, for the second time. A proper smile, full on his face, a little sheepish, his eyes like crescent moons, his voice like the hum of a song. “I can’t even begin to define you, Kokichi.”

He rolls his eyes. It’s a cop-out answer, something that you tell someone who isn’t as close as the others. Who you want to imply is different but don’t want to say. Kokichi doesn’t blame him, of course, he’s never tried to be close. “Wow, kind of a shitty detective who can’t even label his enemies-”

“Do you want to be friends, Kokichi?”

Shuichi, his head tilted forward just a bit, looking into Kokichi’s face. His floor, covered in books and laundry. The laptop still on Kokichi’s lap, balanced precariously, hovering there. Shuichi, not quite smiling. 

It’s a stupid question. A baby question. They’re not kids, barely even teenagers, too old and ancient and full of false life.  
(Another world. In a car, playing music loud and obnoxious, one playlist that they both add to almost competitiively, different tastes in songs, fighting for control of the songs, hitting shuffle again and again. Sprawled on a bedroom floor, discussing overly-pretentious philosophy. Co-leaders of chess club. Laughing as they sway together at a party, Momota and Harukawa looking frustrated as Shuichi drags Kokichi everywhere he goes, tight as anything, a pair of kids, best friends, drunk and sober and excited and tragic, finding each other at the start of the school year and sticking together, desks next to each other every time. Shuichi, with all his other friends, all the other people he loves, has different labels for. Kokichi, slotting in there, a label of his own, someone special.) 

Kokichi’s already been too honest today. He looks away, haughtily. “Don’t you think we have better things to think about?”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t want things.”

He wants to laugh, wants to make some comment about it sounding like a line from a bad romance. His throat is dry. 

Shuichi looks out across his room, like there’s some meaning in the blank walls. “I want to be friends. It’s why I hung out with you all the time- you remember? Right at the start of the game.” Of course Kokichi remembers. His finger still stings when he thinks about it. “I have fun with you.”

“I just thought you were really suicidal,” Kokichi says, and the laugh he wins makes his mouth curl. “You were just desperately hoping I really would kill you, each time.”

Shuichi turns to look at him, and all of a sudden they’re too close. This is normal, they’re just like friends but they’re not, just two guys chatting in a bedroom about work. Shuichi’s eyes dip down to the bedspread, then back up. He looks uncertain, all of a sudden. “I’m sorry we fight all the time.”

“It’s usually my fault.” Kokichi feels a little distant, pulled out of his body. 

“I was worried about you.”

“You never came to see me.” He doesn’t mean to say it. It comes out so quietly that he hopes he can play it off. “I mean, no one did.” That made it worse. His smile is not convincing at all, sticking to his face too much.

Shuichi looks crushed, looks away again, and Kokichi wants to scream. He’s so afraid of seeing anything he didn’t plan for on someone’s face. He’s so weak. A useless excuse for a detective. “I’m so sorry,” he says, just as quietly. “I wanted to.”  
Kokichi knows that. He knows that Shuichi has been busy working himself to death, barely sleeping. He knows that when he wasn’t, Akamatsu has been dragging him all over, trying to stop the others from actually killing each other, this time.

“Don’t be sorry!” He chirps, and he doesn’t know why he’s lying when it’s clearly not fooling anyone. “It was a nice bit of peace and quiet.”

“We work well together,” Shuichi says, after a pause. It’s like they’re having two different conversations, running down two dialogue paths at the same time. 

“You hated me.”

“Not for long.” Shuichi’s voice has lost his steadiness. He’s picking at his shirt sleeve, now, scratching his wrist. “Just after… Gonta. And it faded. It was too confusing, and then- you know. And as soon as I saw- in the hangar- I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just… I didn’t know if it was Kaito or not, and the fact that it might not have been- your uniform in the toilet-”

“Shut up,” Kokichi says, his breath ripped from his lungs, coming too fast. And then, “stop that.” He reaches over, grabs Shuichi’s hand, pulls it away from his own wrist.

The skin under there is rubbed raw, patterened with little scratch-marks. Shuichi blinks, like he’s just been pulled from a swimming pool, drowning in his own memories. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Fuck,” Kokichi mutters, letting go of his hand. “They’re making you crazy.”

“Oh no, this is like- I think it’s an old coping mechanism, I keep getting memories about it now that I’ve started,” Shuichi says, stumbling over his words. “It’s fine, really, I-”

“I’m hallucinating,” Kokichi says. The look Shuichi gives him makes him snort, and then snicker, and then dissolve into laughter. It’s so fucked. “I thought I talked to my past self, like, a week ago.”

“You need to get medicated,” Shuichi says, looking like there’s a part of him, wry and desensitized, that thinks it’s funny, too. “Seriously, Kokichi, those can be really distressing to experience and you don’t need-”

“Oh no, it’s super fucked up,” he cuts in, kind of enjoying the morbidity of it all. “I’m having full-on conversations. Apparently it’s really abnormal.”

Shuichi is silent for a few moments. Then he presses his face into his hands and slumps over, a salaryman who just got fired, a husband who’s just discovered his wife is leaving him.

“Sorry,” Kokichi says, no real empathy in his voice. “I probably just made your paperwork more complicated, huh?” He hates himself for it.

“N-no, I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t put your experiences into anything without your permission,” Shuichi mumbles between long fingers. It’s just his left wrist that’s all scratched up, Kokichi notes. His other arm is fine. (There’s a joke there, about left hands and what you use them for. It doesn’t quite land.) 

Kokichi hums. He tips back on the bed. Swings his feet out like not-Kokichi. Wonders if this conversation is real. “Do you think I’m the most fucked up person out of the class?”

Shuichi is quiet again. He’s always quiet, always thinking about what he’s going to say. He doesn’t fill the silence with meaningless words. Is a lie a lie if everyone knows it’s fake? If there’s no intended deceit, just a comment that you can’t leave alone? Shuichi has such nice eyes. “I wish people didn’t think I had everything together,” he says, and it’s not an answer, but it is, and they’re still having two different conversations. Maybe that’s how Kokichi can know it’s not real, that they don’t align together like his own mind running words all at once. 

“I don’t think they do,” Kokichi says. “I think they just think you’re doing better than them, and that’s good enough, right?”

Shuichi’s hand drifts over to his wrist. Kokichi kicks him, hard. He hasn’t worn shoes in a long time, hasn’t gone anywhere that’s needed them. One pair of boots sits under his bed. He hasn’t asked for more. “We all think our own pain is the worst, right?”

“Right.” Kokichi nods, and he takes that as his answer, too. Shuichi thinks he’s fucked up, but he thinks he’s even more fucked up, himself. He’d probably resent being told that he’s wrong, probably knows it, that Kokichi is more broken than he ever will be. But Kokichi’s to blame for… at least half of it, really, so he probably doesn’t- “Why don’t you treat me like the others?”

“Huh?” Shuichi glances up, starts. “What do you mean?”

“You never mince your words with me.” Kokichi grins, sharply. Like a fox under his own skin, staring down his prey. “I mean, I can’t blame you if it’s just that you get sick of me. I get sick of myself, too.” Maybe self-insult is the best way to annoy Shuichi.

Shuichi frowns, breathes out. “I… the first day. When I woke up. Or… the next day, I guess. The first time we spoke afterward.”

“I remember it.” His own words are too short. 

“I just… There’s no point in lying to you. You see through it, pretty much always, and it doesn’t make you feel better, so.” An inhale. “I mean, I don’t lie to the others. I guess I hold stuff back, but-” He turns to Kokichi, sharply. “Am I burdening you? Is this too much? Please don’t worry about me. I don’t- I don’t mean to treat you-” Like they treat me, he doesn’t say. Like he’s the only thing they can rely on. The only thing that’s real.

“I do it, too,” Kokichi says. “I mean. Not like you.” Why does he keep starting sentences when he doesn’t know what to do with them. “I tell you everything about me.” Bullshit.

Shuichi frowns a little more, but seems more confused than angry. “That’s- that’s not an excuse, you’ve got enough to deal with-”

“So, what, you’re going to try and lie to me? And hope it makes me feel better when you don’t discuss things with me? Don’t make me laugh, Saihara. You’re far too sacrificial.”

“As if you aren’t!”  
They stare at each other, breath rushed, eyes bright, anger sharp and brittle as ice. Shuichi looks away first. He always does. “I’m sorry.”

Kokichi scoffs, looks away too. “Just- pass over some of your work. That’s how it goes best, right? I’ll help you with your deductions. I can try and find some order in the group, too.”

“We’re friends,” Shuichi says, suddenly, sitting up.

Kokichi stares at him. His face is determined, trial-ready, defensive. He doesn’t respond.

Shuichi frowns, shifts, turns his whole body to face Kokichi. He reaches over for the long-forgotten laptop and sets it on the floor, and for a moment Kokichi’s body is alight with aha, he’s touching me, and then it’s gone and he’s left with frustrated embarrassment. “We act like friends. We talk, a lot- I mean, not recently, but u-usually-”

“Stop stammering if you’re trying to convince me of something,” Kokichi grits out.

Shuichi swallows and continues, one hand, torn wrist, twisting in the blankets. “We play games,” he continues. “We talk, people talk to us together, sit together-”

“We haven’t done any of that recently,” Kokichi argues. It’s true. He can’t tell how he feels about it. Less Shuichi. More Shuichi. Pressure, no matter what. 

“Then we should do it again,” Shuichi says. 

Kokichi snorts, turning his gaze up to the ceiling. “So you’ll take some time out of your busy schedule to have breakfast with me?”

“If you want, yeah.”

He does want. Dangerously, terrifyingly so. Shuichi’s friendship is a trick gift, present from the fae, nothing good. Kokichi has DICE and just DICE. Kokichi has nothing. Kokichi works alone. 

“People ask me about you,” Shuichi continues. “Even when we were- busy. Because they know we hang out. We have fun together, we argue, we get along, I don’t know why you have to make such a big deal out of it-”  
“ _You’re_ the one making a big deal,” Kokichi hisses, suddenly more angry than he can say, snake eyes and sharp teeth and poison in his throat. “Why do you have to talk about it so much? Why are you so desperate? Is it reassurance that you want? You mean nothing to me.”

Shuichi, frustrating, terrible, bags under his eyes, tired beyond words. Everyone pushes him too far, makes too much work for him. He’s been trying so hard.  
He must have lost it, really, because then he starts mumbling like a crazy person, like he’s not even talking to Kokichi. “You push people away because you’re afraid of the response to your actions in the game, but it’s not just that, because I’ve already made it clear I want to move past that, so-”

“Stop trying to make me sound rational,” Kokichi says, his voice too quiet, not steady at all. He sounds crazy, too, with his voice shaking, anger and defensiveness and-

“You’re not crazy,” Shuichi says, opening his eyes. When did he close them? When did Kokichi look away. “You’re not a bad person.”

“I’m not meant to be alive.” He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t open them. Momota, reading over the script Kokichi had tucked in his breast pocket, leaning up against the press. _Fuck,_ he’d said. _God, this is fucked._ _  
_He’d been talking about the whole situation; the game, his murder girlfriend, Kokichi setting up the video camera, the little smiling caricatures of himself outlining the script. The cheery diagram of the plan itself at the very beginning of the book.

Shuichi reaches over, grabs his hands. He keeps his eyes closed. “I’m glad you are,” he says, and his voice is like a heartbeat, soft, enormous, beating like butterfly wings. “There was so much I wanted to say to you, I-”

“Then say it.” Kokichi bites the inside of his cheek. If he thinks hard enough, he can pretend he’s a ghost, that this is closure for Shuichi, not him.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that one before.”

A laugh. Soft. Chuckling. Sad. “I wish you’d asked- I wish you’d reached out, you dumbass.”

Kokichi frowns. “Literally any of you could have been the mastermind.”

“I know. I know.” 

Silence. They’re still holding hands. Kokichi opens his eyes.

Shuichi is never quite what he expects. He’s not smiling, just looking at him, looking for something.  
What’s he hoping to find? Is it there?  
Chess, checkers, trials, mystery games, clue. They’re always playing. Sometimes there are stakes, too high to properly conceive, too much to deal with. Sometimes there’s nothing but a conversation. He can’t tell which one of those situations this is. 

Kokichi wets his lips. “If we’re friends, it doesn’t… it doesn’t mean we’re soulmates or something. It’s just a word. We just hang out.”

Shuichi doesn’t smile. He looks more serious than before. “We hang out,” he repeats, like a spell, like it’s binding them. Kokichi echoes it behind his own lips, swallows the sentiment down. 

“You’re entertaining,” he says, like he’s saying _thank you._ But he has nothing to thank the detective for, just a continual annoyance.

Finally, a ghost of a smile, a third one now, too many, too much, all over Shuichi’s face. “You’re never boring, Kokichi.”

“I know.” Fakes a yawn. Stretches. “So, I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow?”

“If you don’t mind me bringing some work along.”  
“I do, actually.” He stands up, gives Shuichi a wicked grin, evil, mastermind-ish. “You’ll just have to cut into some of your group-organization time.” 

Shuichi’s smile is a mirror image, kind, good, brilliant, small. Such a tiny gesture, and it’s enough to shake him. “I’m willing to make that sacrifice, I guess,” he says, and Kokichi resolves to try and manipulate their peers a little. It’s been a while since he fucked with them- it’s just for his own entertainment. Not to try and make Shuichi’s life easier.

Kokichi heads to the door, tossing his head as he goes. “Of course you will. It’s an order from your supreme leader, after all.”

“Wait-” Shuichi’s voice hitches, suddenly, and Kokichi turns. The detective stumbles to his desk, fumbles through sheets and folders and heavy books lined with multicolored post-its, and then he pulls out a folded piece of paper, holding it out with a slightly ashamed air. “I- I grabbed it when we were leaving. I meant to get it to you ages ago, I just… didn’t find the time.”

Kokichi takes it. He turns it over in his palms, unfolds it slowly. His breath hitches when the first sketched-clown mask is revealed. 

He doesn’t speak, but Shuichi, nervous, voice fluttering, does it for him. “I’m sorry, I really wanted to get it to you, I just- I didn’t. I don’t think of you differently, because of it, or anything, it’s just- it’s yours. I didn’t want Danganronpa to have it.”

Kokichi brushes his thumb over the paper. The ink on the pages is still bold, even around the folded lines. He can see every little detail he drew in, everything he was terrified of forgetting. He can’t find his voice, can’t find anything but more lies. “You’re a sentimental fool.”

“I know.” Shuichi half-laughs again, rubbing at the back of his neck, where his hair is short and fuzzy, dark strands sticking up. (Kokichi used to stare at them across the dining table.)

He tucks it away and turns to leave, his hands hooked around the doorframe, half-open, when Shuichi speaks again. “Thanks. For coming to see me.”

Kokichi doesn’t say _I wanted to,_ or _I missed you,_ or _it’s no problem._ He says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Shumai.”  
The old nickname feels sugary on his mouth. He’s always liked sweets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE GONTA........ I LOVE SHINGUJI................. THINKING ABT THEM.................................
> 
> also! i will reply to all ur lovely comments tomorrow, am v sleepy and drunk and i wanna give u the attention u deserve <3 i love yoall
> 
> EDIT: please dont post fanfiction drunk. (more here)


	7. as a result of trusting,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, most Danganronpa casts split up by now,” Iruma says. Her voice is in an odd mid-way place, not the nervous shaky one she gets when she’s overwhelmed, not the overconfident boasting of the girl genius. “They get released from the compound and they sign agreements to shut up about their experiences, and then they split up and never see each other again.”
> 
> Again, silence. Then Himiko speaking, quietly. “Is that going to happen to us?”
> 
> “No,” Shuichi says. Everyone turns to him. He clears his throat, tries to push back the wave of panic as even Kaede looks to him, a question in her eyes, all of them frightened, tragic, doubtful. “We- we’re not like them. We’re stronger than that. We were all trying to save each other, the whole time. Even when we- when we made mistakes, we were still trying, looking out for each other. And- and we’re still trying, right?” He looks at them all, their eyes striking him like arrows, and he resists the urge to shrink back. “We care about each other. We’ll- we just need to take our time with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry the updates are slowing down a bit! ive gotta prioritize school, unfortunately, so it looks like every second day is probably a more reasonable schedule for me than daily updates :( but i promise im thinking about this story like.... all the time lol. i hope this chapter is satisfying! (even if the pacing is janky. im sorry im so bad at sticking scenes together)

Shuichi and Kokichi eat breakfast together at nine am. Most of the others are sitting in the room, too, repurposed office kitchen. The Foundation was eager to put them up, and even if it’s not as well-prepared as Danganronpa was, there’s a bit of charm to it. In their tiny, empty rooms, cubicles turned bedrooms, compared to the perfectly prepared rooms of Danganronpa, far too accurate to their tastes, opulent and mocking. This small kitchen with the fold-out dining tables, no big dining hall. There is one stove and two kettles, one microwave, and they make do. Kokichi, immediately pours them both bowls full of sugary, bright-pink cereal, and Shuichi, who hasn’t eaten this early in the day for quite some time, gets about halfway through and then starts feeling ill- but Tojo rescues him with a plain egg and some tomatoes, and Kokichi finishes their cereal. Kaede comes in a little later, and is delighted to see him there. Shuichi spends longer there than he meant to, gains the strong suspicion that Kokichi is deliberately keeping him there, coaxing him with teasing arguments and genuinely interesting conversation, and when Shuichi finally gets back to his room, he’s left struggling to cram all his documents with words at once- and somehow, he feels genuinely more relaxed than he has for a while. 

The work keeps coming, and there’s a lot of it. He sends half to Kokichi, who pretends not to care but leaves incredibly insightful comments on the sides of his documents, makes fun of obvious mistakes Shuichi should have caught, highlights phrases in purple in a way that Shuichi is incredibly confused by until he realizes it means ‘I approve’. He comes back to his room and finds his notes covered in glittery gel pen, someone ordering him to be more assertive in the margins of his preparation for his next interview. He heads into the recording studio with his statement in his hands, and he’s drowning in memories, reciting past statistics and laws, and he turns a page and finds a drawing of himself standing at a lecturn, and suddenly he has to pause in a way that the internet reports as a breakdown, his shoulders shaking, his voice fractured, when in reality he was trying his best not to laugh. 

After a period of time, Kaede starts slipping into the interviews, her pretty face and wide eyes imploring, directing people to charity lines and pleading with past survivors to come forward. And they do, slowly, anonymous testimonies and then magazine pages with the ultimate sculptor, ultimate paramedic, ultimate matchmaker, talking about making sense of their manufactured past, the trauma that never left, the manipulation upon leaving the simulation. Shuichi tries to take that onto his shoulders, tries to take over the communication, but Amami and Kaede, kindly but firmly, order him to step back and let them manage it- and they do an amazing job, taking all of his past notes and observations. They are pleasant and charming, taking interviews in neat suits and sundresses, heads lifted like celebrities, the most charming pair of broken teens you’ll ever speak to. Danganronpa can’t touch them- Akamatsu and Amami are quickly adored by the public, pale and gorgeous and sweet. Shuichi releases some of his workload, stops studying the past contestants and focuses on the game itself. Slowly, all the testimonies are taken, noted, and another piece of work slips away. He sits up at night and has entire conversations in blue and purple text on the bottom of a document around potential side effects of VR that Danganronpa hid from him. He goes into breakfast and Kaito slings an arm around his shoulders and bullies him into eating properly, and Kokichi follows him back to his room and pesters him until he takes a break from work. 

There are days, weeks, when he’s in and out of the headquarters, talking until his throat is raw, his hands aching from how long he’s spent writing, the skin on his wrist scratched raw, like he’s tried to itch right through. He enters his bedroom just to grab a new stack of papers, barely manages to stop Himiko from tearing Shinguji’s throat out, rushes out to make another meeting with their lawyer, comes back and tries to delicately ask Kaede how the others are doing without stressing her more. But they grow lesser as time passes, as he manages to get out the information rattling around in his head, as their legal case builds and the risk of them being thrown back to Danganronpa lessens, and their PR campaign finally has the funding to take off properly. 

But good things never last, not for Shuichi, not when everyone is busy trying to deal with a mesh of unpleasant emotions that can’t quite stick together. 

It starts when they’re all sitting in the lounge, the first time in a while that they’ve all been in the same room. They’re only there because Tsuda just finished giving a review of their rights and the situation with Danganronpa- e.g., don’t leave the Foundation’s grounds without speaking to a member and planning ahead of time because Danganronpa might take that as a sign of neglect, because Danganronpa, still, will do anything it takes to get them back.

It starts because Kaito makes a badly timed joke about them being safer in prison.

Hoshi stiffens, noticeably, and the temperature in the room drops. Tsuda left a few minutes ago, and nobody had said anything until Kaito tried to lighten the atmosphere. It’s too quiet. Cloistering.

“We’ll be fine,” Kaede says, firmly. “We’re not going anywhere- not to Danganronpa, not to jail. They have no right to take us as long as we play along, right?”

“I mean, half of us are murderers,” Iruma mutters, quietly. 

Kaede stiffens. “It- it was a simulation, and we were pushed to do it- nobody here would do something like that outside of-”

“He would,” Himiko says, cold and quiet, eyes fixed over on Shinguji. 

Shuichi frowns, shifting his weight. “Shinguji-kun didn’t really have control over his actions. Now that he’s away from Danganronpa, he’s in control, right?”

“It’s alright, Saihara-kun,” Shinguji says, voice quiet, measured, and he closes his book and stands up. “I think I will take my leave, if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t want to bother the others more than I already have.”

“We- we aren’t bothered, right, guys?” Kaede tries, and although Yonaga nods and plaintively calls for Shinguji to sit down again. Chabashira’s staring at the ground, hands gripped into the hem of her sweater, and she nods, too, trying so hard. 

Shinguji bows his head. “It’s quite alright, I perfectly understand. If anyone needs me, I shall be in my room.” He leaves, book tucked under his arm, his braids swaying behind him. They are all silent.

After a moment, Amami stands, too. “I- I think I’ll go check on him,” he says quietly, something sore in his voice- touched, sympathetic, a knowledge of what Danganronpa can do that he carries even if he can’t remember it. (They all know he watches his previous game, sometimes.)

Tojo bows her head. “I- I would like to acknowledge the possibility that my actions caused equal distress-”

“No, Kirumi, don’t even say something like that,” Kaede says, reaching out for the girl’s arm, squeezing it gently. “You thought you were doing the right thing- we all respect you, right?”

“‘Course, Tojo,” Hoshi says, his deep voice startling. He tends to slip into corners, all dark clothes and dark expressions, watching from under heavy eyes. “You’re fine.” But his eyes never quite fix on her face, and he’s always tense, and everyone knows how he can’t handle people standing behind him. 

“Well, for the record, I resent Momota-chan terribly,” Kokichi pipes up, hanging off the edge of the counter like an imp. Shuichi glances sideways, frowns at him, and only gets a grin in response, nothing behind it. Kokichi tends to shut down in group situations like this, resort to lies and humor, paint himself the villain again. Shuichi can guess as to why, but there’s no clear answer, no clear solution. 

Kaito sighs, pushing a hand through his hair, then steps forward. “Look, guys,” he says, as if he’s taken Kokichi’s words as a cue to speak up. “We all did things we’re ashamed of, we need to face that, but we also need to know that we’re all more than that! I mean, everyone who killed - except Shinguji, I guess, but- but he was basically possessed - all of us who killed, we thought we were doing the right thing.”

The room goes quiet for a moment, until the sound of sniffling becomes clear. All of them turn as one, and there’s Gonta, hands on his face, crying quietly into his palms. Tears drip down his wrists, and he looks up as they all stare at him, and his lip wobbles. “G- I am sorry,” he stammers, stumbling over his words. “I- Gonta- Gonta is so sorry. P-please ignore Gonta.”

Next to Shuichi, Kokichi has gone very still, like a deer in the headlights, even though no one is looking at him. 

“Gonta, it’s not your fault,” Himiko says softly, and she crosses over and pulls him into a hug, her thin arms wrapped around his waist, barely half his height. He lowers his hands from his face, like he wants to hug her back, but they flutter helplessly in the air. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You were manipulated,” Maki says, coolly, her eyes flicking sideways slightly. Shuichi, in the corner of his eye, sees Kokichi bare his teeth in a grin. 

Gonta shakes his head. “If- If Gonta had found the light on his own, he might still-”

Kokichi slips off the bench, and the movement is sudden enough that it draws everyone’s attention. “Yeah, I’ll cop that one,” he says, far too breezily. “Let’s just chalk that particular death up to Kokichi. Gonta shouldn’t be compared with the rest of the murderers. He doesn’t even remember doing it.”

“What do you mean ‘the rest of the murderers’?” Maki hisses. “No one here is a murderer. No one wanted to kill!”

Kokichi grins at her, easily, and just heads for the door, following after Amami and Shinguji. “Sure, but they did- again, except Gonta. I always thought it was wrong that I didn’t get the credit for that one. Anyway...” and he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him.

“That little-” Maki balls her hands into fists, but Kaito places a hand on her shoulder.

“Guys,” he says, looking around the room. “Maki is right. No one wanted to kill. We can’t hold this against each other.”

“We can’t pretend it didn’t happen,” Chabashira speaks up, suddenly. “We- we can’t just ignore it. It’s not helping anybody. Shinguji, he- we’re all in this awful half-way state where nobody wants to do or say anything.”

“I’ll say it,” Kaede says quietly, all the energy out of her. “We killed each other. And we died. And we don’t know what to do with that.”

Nobody says anything, just the sound of Gonta sniffling in the tiny kitchen, Chabashira leaning sideways to hide her face in Yonaga’s shoulder, Hoshi blowing out a low breath and folding his arms, Kaito and Maki standing together like if they let go of each other they’ll float away. 

“You know, most Danganronpa casts split up by now,” Iruma says. Her voice is in an odd mid-way place, not the nervous shaky one she gets when she’s overwhelmed, not the overconfident boasting of the girl genius. “They get released from the compound and they sign agreements to shut up about their experiences, and then they split up and never see each other again.”

Again, silence. Then Himiko speaking, quietly. “Is that going to happen to us?”

“No,” Shuichi says. Everyone turns to him. He clears his throat, tries to push back the wave of panic as even Kaede looks to him, a question in her eyes, all of them frightened, tragic, doubtful. “We- we’re not like them. We’re stronger than that. We were all trying to save each other, the whole time. Even when we- when we made mistakes, we were still trying, looking out for each other. And- and we’re still trying, right?” He looks at them all, their eyes striking him like arrows, and he resists the urge to shrink back. “We care about each other. We’ll- we just need to take our time with it.”

Everyone keeps staring. Then Tojo takes a step back, and their gazes shift to her. Shuichi breathes a sigh of relief, but her panicked expression doesn’t offer any comfort. “I- I’m sorry,” she says, quietly. “I think… I need to go. I don’t- I can’t do this. I can’t stand by you all.” She flees, head downturned, and immediately Kaede jumps up.

“Kirumi!” She calls, desperation in her voice. And then she’s running out, and the others are left without their main buffer- Kaito and Shuichi staring at each other desperately. Shuichi’s hand goes to his wrist, digs his nails into the skin there, a nervous itch creeping through his veins. 

Kaito smiles, unconvincingly, desperate. “Come on, guys, we’ll get through this.”

“We won’t,” Himiko says, and her voice is almost broken. “We’ll get released and then we’ll never talk to each other again.”

“That’s not true!” Chabashira gasps, tearing away from Yonaga to reach for Himiko, pull her away from Gonta. “I’ll always talk to you!”

Iruma snorts. “And what about the rest of us?”

Gonta hangs his head, reaches up to wipe his eyes again. “Gonta understands if no one want to see him.”

“Gonta…” Shuichi murmurs, staring over at his friend, and guilt digs itself into his spine. He presses his nails in harder. 

“Guys!” Kaito’s voice is growing a little frantic. “We’ll be okay!”

Yonaga stands up, unsmiling, still as pleasant as always when she bows her head. “I think I will retire,” she says sweetly. “Atua is telling me that this will go nowhere.”

“You said you would stop listening to that,” Chabashira calls out suddenly, desperate and so, broken, sad, hurt. 

Yonaga’s expression tightens just a little, but then it relaxes into a smile. She nods to them all before turning to leave, and they- they just keep losing classmates, slipping through the door like they’re dying all over again, leaving the argument sore and open. 

Shuichi scratches his wrist. He pulls his sleeve down over it. He shifts in his seat. He doesn’t have any winning argument here, no perfectly phrased speech, no saved item of evidence.

“...Maybe we should give them some space,” Maki says, quietly. “It’s hard to blame anyone for having hard feelings about what happened in the simulation.”

Iruma stretches, cracking her back almost obnoxiously. “Yeah, well, I’m out of here too. It’s cute playing baseball with you guys and stuff, but I’m sick of pretending we’re functional.” She stands up, pauses for a moment, then turns her head down. “We’re not friends. We won’t be, as soon as we get out of here.”

“We can get through this,” Kaito repeats, reaching for Maki’s hand like it’ll stabilize him. “We’ll be alright.”

“Not all of us are heroes, Momota,” Hoshi says quietly. “We weren’t written like that.” And then he leaves, before even Iruma can, but she’s quick to follow. And then Chabashira and Himiko, and Gonta sinks to the floor and Shuichi- Shuichi doesn’t know what to say.

\--

And just like that- drama. Tension. Nobody talks anymore. There’s a weird politics to the survivors- victims and killers, both blaming themselves. Blackened and innocent. Tojo and Akamatsu spend even more time together than before, quietly cleaning the lounge, speaking softly, avoiding everyone else. Iruma talks too loudly to try and make up for everyone else’s silence. Himiko talks about doing a magic show again, but it’s hard to bring together the energy. Shinguji locks himself in his room, and Amami floats through people, his hair washed out, face tired. Shuichi and Momota try to drag people’s spirits up, and they’re mildly successful until Shuichi gets dumped with a pile of new legalwork and disappears from their fake home for days. 

One day, walking from the bathroom to his bedroom, Kokichi finds Gonta standing in the middle of the lounge and crying quietly.  
He’s frozen in place. There’s nothing to say, nothing to do. Gonta- Gonta has always looked after him, both in and outside the game. He was the first one to come and check up on Kokichi, offered him assistance and kindness. He fucking dragged Kokichi out of one of his more stupid suicide attempts, and he covered it up from the staff when Kokichi begged him too, and Gonta is so kind and Kokichi owes him so much, owes him a life, and he- he can’t. He just can’t.

Gonta deserves comfort, and kindness, and for someone to pull away his guilt, and Kokichi… can’t do that. Kokichi made him kill, set him up to die, said awful, awful things after his death, and he… he can’t face him. He barely makes it through their cordial interactions in the kitchen, doesn’t answer when he hears heavy palms knocking on his door. He cannot comfort Gonta, so he runs. He runs, all the way down the halls, his heart pounding, and he is panicking, wrapped up, and it’s all his fault- it’s his fault that half these deaths hurt so much, it’s his fault that Gonta and Miu can’t look at each other, that Kaito is lumped with the killers. It’s all his fault, and it wasn’t even worth it.

As Kokichi is fleeing the lounge, his heart pounding in his chest, he bumps into Shuichi and almost jumps out of his skin. Shuichi looks- like he did when they first got here, when they were still adjusting to being free and had to scrabble for that freedom, when he was buried in work and panicking every moment he was awake. 

“Hey, Kokichi,” he mumbles, looking drained out of his mind. “How are you?”

Kokichi thinks of Gonta, and that awful sound of sobbing, and how hard Shuichi is working, and the others are, and he grits his teeth.  
“Look after yourself,” he tells the detective, almost angrily. “And- and go look in the lounge. Fucking idiot.”

Shuichi looks shocked, some of the tiredness wiped off his face and replaced with surprise, and he looks hurt, and Kokichi- Kokichi keeps running, storms off to his bedroom, up to his teeth in awful empathy.  
And, because Kokichi doesn’t know how not to, he plans.

It’s not too hard to get everyone together. Kokichi bribes most of them with a packet of pancake mix, and he drags Shinguji out by telling him he’s doing a social experiment (which he doesn’t think the weirdo believes, but he’s interested enough in Kokichi to come out anyway) and he gets Hoshi with a pack of cigarettes he snatched from a Foundation member, and he gets Tojo just by asking for help with the pancakes, and Harukawa by telling her Momota’s going to be there. They’re all so easy- the tricky part is making it look like he’s not staging an event, just a casual thing, making them all think that he only asked them, that all the others showed up organically. And even that isn’t too hard, because there’s not too many people here who think that hard about what crazy Kokichi does- Momota watches him a little curiously as he sets up a row of syrups, and Iruma stares carefully, like she half-expects him to poison them all. 

Kokichi gets Shuichi by leaning against his door and telling him to come out. 

Shuichi, exhausted as always, clever, willowy, bright, blinks down at his documents in a way that makes it very clear just how much sleep he didn’t get, and then stands up and follows him out. 

Once everyone is settled in the kitchen, Kokichi serves a pile of pancakes and waits. The energy grows stiffer and stiffer, and the others grow more and more tense. He watches and waits- the way Chabashira and Yonaga have to have Yumeno sit between them, now. The way Gonta lurks at the back and Miu glares at her plate. The way Akamatsu’s attempts at conversation fall short, how she almost resigns herself to sticking with Tojo, neither of them eating as they watch over the others like a pair of guardians, gargoyles, mother-figures, sisters, too many expectations. 

Kokichi waits, and he watches, and eventually, casually pouring syrup over his pancake, he says “wow, so much for getting along, huh? Killing harmony, indeed.”

And across the table, he watches Momota’s eyes practically spark. 

“Come on, dipshit, can you not?” Miu grumbles, gripping her fork like she’s seconds away from throwing it at him. Many others seem to share the sentiment. Kokichi stuffs his mouth full of banana and tries to pretend he can’t feel Shuichi staring at him. Gonta’s cries echo in his ears.

And then- Momota. His savior. Unfortunately. (He's just really, really predictable and easy to manipulate. And reliable in an irritating way.) "No," he says, standing up, his fork clattering to the floor dramatically. "You know what? Ouma's right. We can't let this stay unaddressed." And, because he's very predictable and very easy to fit into Kokichi's plans, he sits back down and sets his fist on the table. "Let's talk about this."

"But where do we even start?" Kokichi asks, innocently, twirling his fork in the air. "I mean, there's so much unaddressed, here. Where do we even begin?"

"How about this?" Momota asks, almost challengingly, staring at him across the table, his gaze determined as ever. Truly, a classic protagonist. "Ouma, I'm sorry for killing you."

Harukawa stares, but everyone else remains quiet. It's laughable. Really, he wants to laugh it off. Apologize for killing someone? Like that'll fix it. This entire situation is stupid and ridiculous.  
But Kokichi is nothing if not a dedicated actor, so he replies, as earnestly as he can force his voice into being, "I'm sorry for making you. And-" He really has to push aside his pride now, ball it up and swallow it down, remind himself he can come back from this, that this is just for now, just to get everyone to stop fucking- acting so stupid. "Gonta, I'm." He makes eye contact for just a moment, and then has to look away again, twirling the fork between his fingers. "I'm sorry for making you kill Miu. I'm a manipulative bastard, and I tricked you. So, sorry. Sorry for killing you, too, Miu. I meant it when I said it was my fault."

Gonta sniffs, and Kokichi's stomach rolls. "G-Gonta is sorry, Iruma, that he did something so horrible."

Miu stares at him, and neither of them look at Gonta, just at each other, and then she clicks her tongue and looks away. "I'm sorry for trying to kill you, I guess. I- I only picked you because I wanted- I wanted it to be someone I trusted, I guess. I didn't want you to get executed." She breaks into a sharp grin, not quite honest, but enough. "And because I figured you'd see through me in the trial, shrimp."  
She swivels in her chair, points a fork at Gonta. "And I don't hate you or anything. I know it wasn't your fault. I'm sorry you got dragged into our bullshit."

Gonta looks genuinely surprised, from the corner of Kokichi's eye, and he quickly wipes his nose. "N-no, it was Gonta's-"

"Stop that," Miu cuts in, puffing out her chest. "You were probably the only one out of the three of us who didn't actually plan to kill someone."

"Besides," Kokichi adds, already melting from the awful, horrible guilt that he's fucking forced to address, to stare right at. "You don't even remember it. I mean, if everything happened in a simulation, and that was a simulation in a simulation... it was basically just a bad dream for you." Gonta's face, all awful hope and disgusting, worse, thankfulness, like Kokichi's testimony actually means something to him. Kokichi takes a breath. "And. For the record, I guess. I'm sorry for what I said about you, and- and I didn't mean any of it. Well, mostly. I was kind of pissed when you didn't argue back." Pissed doesn't begin to cover it. He doesn't want to ever think about that trial again.

But Gonta smiles, almost sadly, wiping his eyes. "Gonta knows," he says, softly, too soft. Kokichi's heart clenches.

The entire group is staring at him. He scowls at them. "What? None of the rest of you are getting apologies from me. I didn't kill any of you, so fuck off." 

And a laugh ripples around the kitchen, and Miu shouts 'you're such a dick!' and Momota smacks his knee like someone's weird uncle, and Kokichi is freed from the attention and skepticism and weird, awful feelings. He goes back to ignoring them, now, because his part is done- because after him spilling out his guts like that, the others follow.

"Chabashira-san, Yonaga-san, I am sorry beyond words," Shinguji says, bowing his heads, and his voice sounds tight behind his mask. "I wish there was anything I could do to make it right."

Yonaga clasps her hands together. "I am sorry to have left you suffering so long after waking. I should have told you I forgave you a long time ago."

"You owe me nothing." His voice sounds a little firmer, then. "I appreciate it more than I can ever express, but your own recovery is far more important than mine."

"Oh, shush," Chabashira says, her voice shaking just a bit. "We're all important here. E-even you degenerates." And another laugh spreads around the room, and Yumeno reaches out to take the taller girl's hand. Chabashira's cheeks turn red. "A-and, Yonaga-san, I am so sorry for fighting with you so much. And Y-Yumeno-san, for bothering you. I know I was... overbearing. Far more than I had the right to be." She bows her head.

"I've already told you to call me Himiko," the tiny witch mutters. "And it's f-fine. I'm sorry for not respecting your feelings more."

Yonaga throws her arms around the both of them. "I'm sorry for trying to take control all the time!"

And more apologies come. Tojo, to them all, about failing to value their lives. Akamatsu, to Amami, for causing his death, to Shuichi for forcing him to accuse her. Kokichi even gets a few- one from Momota, for being so harsh on him, which he's quick to dismiss because duh, he was playing the villain. One from Shuichi, quiet and soft, about how he should have tried harder, and Kokichi tries to dismiss that one too, but Shuichi is irritatingly insistent about it. He even gets one for the elusive Harukawa of his nightmares, who quietly apologizes for choking him- which is all he's probably going to get from her, but that's fine. He's not exactly about to go being best buddies with her.

Amami apologizes for being so secretive. They all tell him that's stupid. Momota and Shuichi both apologize for fighting with each other, and Kokichi has to try very hard not to chime in about how he basically orchestrated that whole thing. Tojo apologizes to Hoshi, specifically, and he tells her that although he's still recovering, she was forgiven a long time ago. Shinguji, to everyone who participated in the seance. Yonaga, to the student council. Harukawa, to everyone, for coming off cold. Shuichi, surprisingly, his voice choked and quiet and close to tears, apologizing to everyone who died, telling them how he blames himself for every death. He looks at Kokichi as he says it, his voice thick, and Kokichi can't look away.

By the end of it all, he's one of the only people who isn't crying, and that's only because Kokichi only cries on command. And his job is done. He orchestrated all the mushiness, and when things calm and the others seem to relax into a more stable peace, he goes to slip away. 

Shuichi catches his wrist.

Kokichi looks up at him, still seated at the table. Shuichi sniffs, and smiles, and Kokichi doesn't make fun of him for crying.

"You didn't finish your pancakes," Shuichi says, quietly.

Kokichi pauses, and then he gets back up to the table. Only because he hadn't finished them. Only because he was the one who made them.

(It's not so bad, really. He loses a little bit of his villain rep, but it's easy enough to get back with a few well-timed insults. Except with Miu and Momota, who seem to think he's some kind of sappy, redeemed character now. And Shuichi, but that was a lost cause ever since the idiot detective decided they were friends.)

\--

**_Akamatsu has created a new server!_ **

_Akamatsu has added 14 others to the server._

**Akamatsu:** Hey guys, I thought, since we’re out and everything, it’d be a good idea to make a new chat- to bond, and catch up. I’ve made a few channels in here to talk about progress with the DR case, and one for emergencies, but this is just a general chat!

_Momota has changed Akamatsu’s nickname to thanks mom._

**thanks mom:** thanks i hate it

 **Momota:** :D

 **Hoshi:** I can already sense the chaos in here

 **Iruma:** HHHHMAKE A NSFW CHANNEL

 **thanks mom:** Absolutely Not. 

**Ouma:** i thought tojo was my mommy?

 **Momota:** OH MY GOD  
 **Momota:** THATS THE FIRST MESSAGE YOUVE EVER SENT TO US  
 **Momota:** THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOUVE ACTUALLY PARTICIPATED IN A CHAT  
 **Momota:** AND ITS TO SAY THAT.

 **Ouma:** nishishishi

 **Iruma:** BAN HIM

 **Ouma:** ban me yourself, coward

_thanks mom has banned Ouma from the server._

**Chabashira:** OMG 

**Amami:** Kaede loses it ™ 

**thanks mom:** I gotcha Iruma-san ;)

 **Iruma:** dhhjshjsjjsjkssjskjskjjdshsk

 _Saihara has unbanned Ouma from the server._ _  
__Saihara has added Ouma to the server._

 **Ouma:** nishsishi

 **thanks mom:** I knew I shouldn't have given you admin rights...

 **Saihara:** I’m sorry, but you were going to add him back anyway.  
 **Saihara:** I just wanted the brownie points.

 **Ouma:** shumai! How manipulative….

 **Chabashira:** degeneracy. utter degeneracy.

 **thanks mom:** somehow I regret this immensely.

\--

One day, Kokichi wakes up at three in the afternoon and stumbles into the kitchen for nutrients. He’s not surprised to find it full of people, but the specific gathering is unusual- Akamatsu and Miu on one side, chatting happily as Miu paints her nails a truly garish shade of pink, and Shuichi across from them, pouring hot water into the coffee pot and dropping a teaspoon of something in, too. He looks up when Kokichi enters, and despite the fact Kokichi’s pretty sure his face is covered in drool and he definitely doesn’t smell too good, he looks completely happy to see him. 

“Kokichi!” He says, like he’s meeting an old friend in the supermarket. “Come sit down. Do you want something?”

“Frosted flakes,” Kokichi mumbles, dramatically sinking into one of the stools in the kitchen, across from Miu and Akamatsu, next to Shuichi. Just because. He makes a show of sinking into his hands. “I’m so tiiiiiiired.” He’s not, really, he’s well-rested for the first time in a while. He just doesn’t feel like his body is real yet.

Akamatsu’s face shifts sympathetically. “Aw, I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like a cup of something?”

Kokichi shrugs, lifting his head and pretending to yawn. “Well, you know me. I like my coffee like I like my women-”

“You hate coffee,” Shuichi says, very casually, like he’s just making an observation and not saying something dangerous as all hell, busy pushing down the plunger with a steady hand.

Kokichi twists around and slaps him on the arm, like Momota would. “I was _going_ to say- sweet enough to rot my teeth, filled with energy, and covered in cr-”

“Oh my god.” Shuichi abandons the coffee pot, and a hand lunges over and covers Kokichi’s mouth, laughing. “That’s so gross, don’t you dare.”

Kokichi licks his hand and enjoys the yelp of disgust when he pulls it back, and decides that the crisis is successfully diverted.

Akamatsu sighs, folding up her magazine. “Ouma, really, that’s so disrespectful.”

Miu snorts, leaning against Akamatsu’s side, flicking toxic pink over her nails. “Please, that twink has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s probably just repeating what he hears online like any other twelve year old.”

“That’s still no excuse,” Akamatsu frowns. “It’s objectifying.”  
“You’re right,” Kokichi tells her, widening his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Akamatsu-chan. Wou-”

He doesn’t get to finish the rest of his sentence, because Shuichi cuts in with a heavy sigh, shoving a mug in front of him. Kokichi blinks down at it as the detective slides into the seat next to him. “I don’t know what you’re going to say next, but I know that it’s going to be degrading for everyone who has to experience it.”

Kokichi squints down at the mug. It’s covered in whipped cream and… sprinkles. It’s almost mocking. “What is this?”

“Coffee,” Shuichi says, picking up his own cup and taking a slow sip, looking very pleased with himself behind the rim of the mug. “Filled with energy and sweet enough to rot your teeth. Quite possibly, actually.”

Miu cackles, flicking pink polish all over the table. “And covered in cream! Saihara, is that yours?”

“Iruma-san!” Kaede stands up and swats the girl on her head as Shuichi splutters. “Hold on, ah- fuck, I need to-”

“Akamatsu!” Iruma gasps. “Did I just hear beloved Akamatsu-chan swear?”

“Oh, shut up,” Akamatsu says, but almost fondly. “Don’t touch anything, I’ll be right back.” She disappears, and Miu, gross, embarrassing Miu, does not touch anything, and stays obediently still as Akamatsu disappears, pink stains all over the counter.

Kokichi takes the time to stare down at the mug. The sprinkles are all clumped in one place, and the cream came out of a can, like it was made in a rush so Shuichi could get the joke out. “I hate coffee,” he says.

“Just try it,” Shuichi says, imploringly, kindly, his eyes all soft. “It’s mostly milk, really, and I put in some vanilla while I was brewing it.”

“Oh fuck, let me get some of that,” Iruma moans, still not moving. Shuichi stands up again, moving around Kokichi’s back to grab the pot and pour another mug. “Milk and no sugar.”

Kokichi sniffs. “I don’t trust the taste of anyone who drinks their coffee black, Shuichi,” he says.

“I put sugar in!” Shuichi insists, pouring in a splash of milk into Miu’s mug, sliding it over the table. “I just don’t like milk. It makes it taste too mild.”

“I think you’re just faking because you think it makes you look cooler,” Kokichi says, finally picking up his own cup when Shuichi sits back down. A few sprinkles run off the sides and fall on the plate. 

Shuichi leans an elbow on the table, watches him like he’s genuinely interested in Kokichi’s reaction to the bizarre mess of sugar and caffeine. “Maybe when I first started drinking it. But it grew on me.”

Kokichi is suddenly struck with an image of a younger Shuichi, sitting in a police station while his detective uncle hands over a stack of papers. He’s in a school uniform now, blue and tied with a ribbon at his neck, and one of the officers hands him a cup of dark liquid, which he accepts, his face twisting up as he struggles to pretend he likes it. He drinks the whole thing, and jitters the whole car ride home.  
Obviously that didn’t happen. Shuichi didn’t exist up till about six months ago.

Kokichi takes a sip of his drink. The whipped cream is soaking into the coffee. It’s almost a bit too sweet, even for him, syrupy and milky, and it doesn’t really taste like coffee at all- flavored milk with too much sweetener. Shuichi is still watching him. He takes another sip. 

“It’s disgusting,” he reports, then drinks it again. Shuichi relaxes like he was genuinely waiting for a response, a chef anticipating judgement. 

Shuichi nudges his arm, gently, and they’re so touchy this morning-afternoon, drinking coffee in the kitchen with Miu across the counter now painting her nails again, like Shuichi’s drink is permission enough to move again. “We’ll turn you into a coffee-drinker yet,” he says. “I’ll keep making it with slightly less milk until you take it black.”

Miu mumbles something (probably horrific) about that last statement, but Kokichi ignores her, raising an eyebrow. “But still with six sugars?”

“It’s gross without any sugar,” Shuichi says, wrinkling his nose just a bit. “I’m not a _monster,_ Kokichi.”

It makes him laugh. He’s not sure why, why he laughs so much, spluttering into his drink, the offense in Shuichi’s face, like he’s genuinely impassioned about his own drink opinions, like the idea of ever serving Kokichi completely black coffee would be akin to poisoning him. He’s not sure why, but maybe that’s part of why it’s so funny, why he ends up slumping against the counter for support, clutching his stomach.

Shuichi laughs, too, although he looks a bit embarrassed, like he thinks Kokichi is laughing at him- which he is, a bit, but he’s in on the joke too, if there’s any joke to be in on. “Kokichi- Kokichi- you got cream in your hair,” he sighs, leaning forward and swiping his fingers through, tugging just a bit as he cleans it out, wipes his hand off on his shirt.

“Gross,” Kokichi says, and he looks even more sheepish, and Kokichi laughs again. 

Miu makes a series of gagging noises, but then the kitchen door opens and she perks up like a lapdog, until Harukawa’s stone face peeks through, and then the rest of her body follows.

Harukawa doesn’t look too pleased to see either Kokichi or Miu. She plants her hands on her hips. “Shuichi, are you ready for training?”

“Yeah, sure.” He drains the last of his coffee and stands up, giving Kokichi an apologetic smile.

“You guys are doing that again?” Kokichi glances between them, as Shuichi moves to stand by Harukawa, whose glare eases up only a smidge as he brushes back a strand of hair from her face, the gesture fond and easy. 

Shuichi looks back, and his expression makes Kokichi’s stomach twist itself into knots. “Yeah, we thought… it’s a good way to release stress. Plus, Kaito can actually contribute, now.”

“And Shuichi’s been wasting away lately,” Harukawa says, rolling her eyes. “If we don’t drag him out, he’ll turn to paper.”

Shuichi looks sheepish, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves, but he smiles over at Kokichi. “Do you want to join us? You can go at your own pace, I’m definitely not the strongest figure-”

“Ew, god. The ultimate supreme leader does not _work out,_ Shuichi.” Kokichi pulls a face, tongue out, eyes scrunched, his view of Shuichi scrunching, too. Unfortunately, the detective’s laugh is still clear through it. “You better not turn into a gym rat or something. Then who would do all our paperwork?”

“Oh, he’s not in any danger of turning into a gym rat,” Harukawa says, raising an eyebrow. If it were anyone else, Kokichi might think it was a joke, the way she looks at Shuichi, something wry in her expression, Shuichi spluttering defense of himself. 

“Even Harukawa thinks you’re a scrawny bitch,” Miu snorts, lifting her mug to her lips and grinning into it. Shuichi basically pouts in an incredibly degrading way, like a kicked dog. Kokichi tries to ignore it. 

Harukawa rolls her eyes and prods the detective’s arm. “Come on,” she says. “You can rot your teeth with caffeine later.”

Shuichi leaves with a last wave, and Kokichi stares after him, Harukawa’s prickly presence fading away. The coffee in the back of his throat is sticky sweet, now, cloying like honeysuckle. 

“And just like that, the leader is caught,” Miu says, her voice lacking a bit of its usual bite, like she’s- commiserating or something.

Kokichi turns to her sharply, all false smiles. It’s usual banter for them, his fake-like-hate dismissal. “Hm? Sorry, whore, what were you saying?”

She grins back, wrapping her hands around the coffee mug. “Just that you’re weak for our local detective, that’s all.”

His smiles get smilier, wider. “I don’t think I know what you mean, bitch-chan.” Kokichi isn’t weak for anybody. Definitely not detectives. Not Saihara. Not sweet mugs of disaster liquid and people who fold up his own drawings and save them for him. 

“Oh my god,” Miu scoffs. “Please, it’s so obvious. You’re three seconds away from jumping him at all times.”

Kokichi’s whole body goes cold. The cream in his stomach rolls like he’s suddenly developed lactose intolerance. “I am not-”

“Aw, are you too shy? I mean, I don’t blame you. Shy-hara’s pretty cute for a socially constipated freak.” Miu clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Do you think he’d hit it? Just once, I mean, I doubt I’m his type, like, emotionally, but I’ve got pretty-”

“Stop it.” His heart is running too hard. He doesn’t know why that makes him so angry, Miu making stupid, awful, dangerous implications that she doesn’t know anything about, then going and implying she would- that Shuichi would-

Surprisingly, she does. She lifts up her mug and takes a slow sip, watching him. “Didn’t you know?”

Saihara Shuichi, two teaspoons of sugar in his coffee, vanilla in the pot. He likes dumb comedies just as much as Kokichi, though he likes to catch the errors, make it into a game, and Kokichi likes to turn his brain off and make fun of it. Kokichi thinks of him a lot, too much, when he’s feeling awful and when he’s feeling good, when they haven’t seen each other in days and when they’ve just said goodbye. Shuichi, in the game, Kokichi’s guilty pleasure, awful wish fulfillment, rivalry like a romance, someone he liked too much and tried to let go of as soon as he locked himself in the hangar, as soon as he shook Gonta’s hand, as soon as he stole the key to the outside world. As soon as he decided he’d do anything to win the game.  
Sure, he liked Shuichi. Sure, he thought he was hot and he thought about his hands and his face and the way his voice trembled and the way it went steady and proud during trials, and he thought about Shuichi hurting him and loving him and it was all terrible wish fulfillment while everything fell around his ears. But it was never real. It was just because Shuichi was there and he was clever and interesting and incredibly attractive in a kind of sad, broken way which was unfortunately what Kokichi liked. It wasn’t- it didn’t last outside of the simulation. It was just because he was stressed. 

“There’s nothing to know, you pathetic skank.” He sneers. It feels shaky on his face. Miu doesn’t look the least bit intimidated.

“It’s okay, you know,” she says, after a moment. “I’m like that, too.”

He laughs, properly, then. “Oh, please, that’s obvious to everyone with half a brain. You’re such a pervert, it’s no surprise that you don’t care who’s fucking you-”

“No, dumbass,” she snaps, although that finally gets a pink tinge to her cheeks as she slams down the mug, so hard he thinks the ceramic might have splintered. “I… I like someone, too. Someone good. You know. Not like us.”

Kokichi stares at her, for a long moment. She doesn’t stare back. He wonders what she’s thinking. About her elusive somebody. About Shuichi. About him, staring at her as she’s choked out. It doesn’t matter if she’s alive, because he didn’t know that at the time. She didn’t know it, either. She tried to kill him. He killed her.  
Not like us.

“Sucks to suck, I guess,” he says, and his voice doesn’t waver at all. Miu laughs, tapping her shiny pink nails over the counter.

Kokichi doesn’t ask who it is. He doesn’t need to, not after Akamatsu finally comes stumbling back into the room with her hair twisted into a bun, blabbering about how she finally got some acetone from Tojo, fussing over the stains on the counter, bossing Miu into helping her. Not after Miu takes a rag and the bottle without complaining and looks over at Kokichi and smiles at him, like they’re partners again, like he’s just slapped a batch of blueprints on her desk and she’s switched on the vacuum and they’ve got a goal. 

“Oh, Ouma, did Shuichi head off to training?” Akamatsu asks, glancing over at him, soft eyes and a pleasant smile, her arm just brushing against Miu’s shoulder. 

He likes that she’s asking him, like he knows what Shuichi’s doing. “Yeah.”

\--

_They’re in the bathroom. It’s not unusual for them, huddled up on the third floor during class, licking their wounds._

_“Hold still.” Cold fingers across his cheekbone, the other hand smoothing down a bandage. He holds as still as he can, holds his breath, wouldn’t move ever again if it meant he got to keep this. Those fingers press down a little tighter, and it aches, hurts, the ragged flesh there doing its best to heal as it’s covered up, tucked away. “Okay, should be good.”_

_He lets his breath out, lets his eyes flicker up. His best friend stares at him, concerned, his eyes alight with passion- so much emotion there, frenzied enthusiasm that gets him in trouble. His left eye is bruised, purple swelling over his nose._

_“Let me help, too.” He feels worse than worthless, watching his friend fuss over him, clean up his wounds, right after jumping into the fight they couldn’t win, sharing the burden between them._

_But he shakes his head, good, too good, no one else gets to see this softness, this care. “I’m fine. Not even bleeding. You got the worst of it.”_

_“If you say so.” Lifts his chin obediently, lets those cold fingers trace over his neck, his pulse. He tries not to shudder._

_“Sorry.” The apology is murmured, a little ashamed. “Did that hurt?”_

_Yes, but not in the way he means. It hurts every time they’re close. Drums run behind his eyes, discordant music tangles round his wrists. “No.” He wets his lips._

_Just a grunt in response, gentle acknowledgement, and then a wet cloth is dabbed over his neck- disinfectant, because for all his dirty obsessions, the person caring for him is clean to the core, unnaturally so. (He said once, laughing, drunk, that he dreams about cleaning up blood. Everyone knows what happened to his parents.)_

_Shudders, stares at him, this ghost wrapped up in flesh, cold, cold hands, eyes like honey, nails like soot. Scratched-in scars all up his wrist. Is he so death-obsessed because of his past, or is he just like that, rotting to the core? He’s so, so scared of losing him to that fascination, but it would be hypocritical to pretend he doesn’t feel it, too._

_“Why were they picking on you today?”_

_He tears his eyes from that face, perfect, frozen. If the boy mopping blood from his collarbone dies, it won’t be an end- it’ll be a return, something pulling him home to an otherworldly plane. (He doesn’t say this, even though it would be taken as nothing but a compliment. This not-ghost doesn’t need any more encouragement to go chasing some higher existence.) “Was looking at the air weird, I guess.”_

_A little exhale. Hands hovering over the buttons on his gakuran. “I’m gonna unbutton it a bit, okay? Your collarbones are scraped.”_

_“Gross, don’t do that.” They stare at each other for a moment, and then the lie is taken for what it is, and elegant, scraped fingers push through the buttons on his jacket, on the shirt underneath, peeling them until the top of his chest is exposed. He can’t quite breathe. “Y-you know, they said they were going to kill me today.” Why does he keep doing this?_

_The fingers snag, catch, and he looks up suddenly, honey eyes wide and frightened. “They did?”_

_“They wanted to cut through my stomach and eat my heart.” Why does he do it? It comes out shaking softly, frightened, too convincing. It takes far too long for him to lick his lips, swallow back another wave of discomfort. “I’m just lying.”_

_“Fucking hell.” He breathes out slowly, looks away, then pushes the shirt aside, picks up a bit of tissue again, wets it with antiseptic. “I would’ve killed them.”_

_“You’re crazy.” It comes out breathless, laughing, what everyone else says, but he can’t stop staring. If he bruised his waist and back, would he put his hands there? Crazy. They’re both crazy._

_“Yeah.” But he’s smiling, like he doesn’t mind that they’re crazy, that one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth. Gemini, parallel, contrasting. “This might sting a bit, sorry.”_

_“I’ll never forgive you.” Another lie, another laugh. The liquid is dabbed against his collarbones, makes him hiss and wince. He stares up at his bruised healer, laughter bubbling out between his teeth. “You really got the shit kicked out of you, huh?”_

_“H-hey!” So defensive, even with his black eye and bruised nose, the kick to his ribs that made him cough up his lunch. Still, his hands are so steady, too kind. “See if I come and save you again.”_

_“Oh no, what will I do without my equally-weak compatriot lying on the ground next to me as they stomp our faces in?” He says it mockingly, morbid, sad, but he means it. What would he do without him?_

_Another inhale, clammy hands pulling away, tossing the tissue somewhere on the shitty floor of this shitty school. “You’re really mean for someone bleeding out of their eyeballs.”_

_“Shut up.” He laughs. It makes his face sting, his chest ache, his breath rip away, but it feels good. “You’d never let that happen to me. You’re my personal bodyguard!”_

_And he laughs, too, happy ghost, delicate fingers and broken mind and fucked up heart pounding blood. “You have bad taste in employment.”_

_“Don’t I know it.” He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t._

\--

Time passes. Things calm. Shuichi’s hands, scratching and restless, still a little. Slowly, the workload drips back, and back, until it isn’t so much that he has things he needs to do, but things that he wants to, things that will help, things to keep his brain busy. 

Time passes, and the court decides they’re free from Danganronpa, psychologists decide they have no need to be locked up in the compound, and everyone breathes a coordinated sigh of relief. They’re still stuck with the Foundation for the time being, but it’s not like anyone has any idea where else they’d go, so it’s fine. 

Shuichi works out with Kaito and Maki- and then with Himiko, and with Kaede, and Chabashira, and Hoshi. Sometimes others come in and out, Yonaga spending all her time stretching instead of running the drills, Kokichi perched on a chair and offering criticism despite never actually joining in. Shuichi goes to therapy. Shuichi gets diagnosed with a mix of anxiety and depression- the PTSD is apparently already on his charts. Shuichi takes it upon himself to make coffee for everyone, next to Tojo in the kitchen in the mornings, learning all the requests off by heart. The slender girl is always quiet but seems soothed by his presence, though she never lets him cook. Shuichi is approached by a charity set up for Danganronpa survivors, and he forces the rest of the class to push through one final year of high school, which most of them do with plenty of complaining. They take online classes- he studies law, and history, and physics, but he also picks up art history and takes great pleasure in having overly-pretentious conversations with Kokichi about high art that Kokichi refuses to admit he knows nothing about. He stocks the freezer full of ice cubes, and when he’s feeling awful in the middle of the night, he walks in and grabs one and lets it melt in his palm, burn up and drip over his skin, and it feels awful and great and it’s better than anything else his awful mind tries to tell him to do. Shuichi grows familiar with his own dreams, tries to come to terms with the creep who lurks there, put himself back together. Shuichi learns how to braid hair and puts Kaede’s up for her every night. Shuichi plays ARG games that Kokichi sends him. Shuichi and Kaito learn swing dancing to try and impress Maki (it doesn’t work, but she laughs so long and hard that it feels better than any kind of admiration would.) Shuichi gets diagnosed with aspergers. Shuichi builds a networking relationship with the local police precinct, who would be interested in giving him an internship when he’s got a highschool degree. 

Time passes.

On the weekdays, he has school, which really only takes a few hours online. On the weekends, they rent a nearby gym and start playing baseball again. They end up in a few press campaigns like that, photos plastered over magazines of them laughing and playing together like normal kids. 

Shuichi gets a bonsai tree and promptly kills it. Kaede laughs at him, but she drags Amami in to teach him about soil acidity and how much water plants actually need, and he gets another that grows slow and tiny, like a little lump of moss.  
He starts doing some of his schoolwork with Shinguji, the two of them sitting in Shinguji’s bedroom and typing away silently, one occasionally asking the other for assistance, a mental catalogue of information stored in their minds. It’s like they’ve cheated, really. Shuichi’s knowledge of human anatomy and history of crime was never learned, but he has it, anyway. Shinguji’s ever-extensive lists of dates was absent one day and there the next, but they still study like other kids, still take the time to write essays and edit them and double check their language. Shinguji is decent company, now that he isn’t convinced the ghost of his abusive sister is possessing him and telling him to murder people. The way he grows excited about his interests is actually kind of endearing, and after a few weeks of this, Shuichi would dare to call them friends- although the relationship is a little awkward at times, and there are days when Shinguji clearly can’t bare to look at him. It’s complicated.

Everything’s complicated, though. He and Kaede are thick as thieves, tight as siblings. They sleepover in each other’s rooms, one in a pile of cushions on the floor and the other in bed missing their blankets. They tease each other. They talk about their friends, about school, and it’s… almost normal. Kaede tells him, one day, her voice shaking, that she’s picking up the piano again- that she still had some muscle memory, like she’d played before, that her mind still remembered all the right notes. She’d said it had been hard. That her hands on the keys made her feel breathless. That she couldn’t even look at a grand piano, or anything with a lid that shut. Shuichi had reached over and held her trembling hands, and she couldn’t look at him, either. But the next day, he woke up on her floor and she made him omurice, and they ate in the kitchen and let the others fill in around them, and it hadn’t felt so… so heavy. 

Shuichi gets buried in work again. It’s like a cycle, of looking after the others, working, relaxing, really, really good days that feel like he’s healing- and then more work, just when he thought he’d crossed all his t’s and dotted all his i’s. He keeps thinking he’s done, able to move on, and then Danganronpa does something bold and stupid that he has to make interviews about and try and contact a second lawyer for.  
It’s during one of these times that he stumbles back after a long, exhausting discussion of their legal rights and if they can push up their PR campaign, and what they can afford, that he stumbles back to his room to review his notes- and finds them covered in post-its.  
It’s not unusual for Kokichi to make addendums to his notes, written in obnoxiously sparkly purple pen, little doodles all over the sides, but these are… different. These are bad jokes, written out in fancy kanji, drawings of him in cliche detective uniforms, weird compliments that are so bizarre he’s not sure they’re real.

_What did the duck-tective say? (drawing of a duck with a magnifying glass) ‘let’s quack this case!’_

_Stop overthinking, you’re the ultimate obsessive genius, remember?_

_When does a detective need an umbrella? When he’s undercover! (umbrella doodle)_

_For someone who never sleeps, you have surprisingly bright eyes._

_Take a break, Saihara, I can tell you’re reading this at 3 am._ (It was four, actually.)

_(a drawing of him making an-overly fancy frappuccino, holding it out triumphantly)_

_There’s a thin line between investigation and stalking. (drawing of sherlock holmes staring out from behind a wall)_

_You work too hard, dumbass!_

Shuichi is left feeling confused, fully awake, and smiling despite himself. He’d definitely locked his door, so the image of Kokichi breaking in…. Definitely should not be endearing. But it somehow is, the idea that he broke in, slapped a bunch of friendly notes over Shuichi’s work, and then slipped out again and locked the door behind him is.  
It has Shuichi smiling as he sets the work aside and goes to bed. His interview notes can wait, he guesses. He definitely wouldn’t be able to focus if he was going to keep finding all those drawings and jokes and instructions to go to bed.  
At breakfast the next morning, Shuichi has had five hours of sleep, is feeling significantly better, and can’t help but confront Kokichi about it.

He catches him in the hallway on the way to the kitchen, snags a hand in a bright orange hoodie. Kokichi blinks up at him, quickly slipping into a lazy smile. He’s got shapes painted under his eyes today, purple on his eyelids, and Shuichi thinks that means he’s in a good mood. (When Kokichi’s feeling bad, he wears white. Shuichi’s not sure if he’s noticed this himself.) “Detective,” the liar drawls, tracing a foot over the ground. “Am I in trouble?”

“What? N-no.” The implication that Shuichi would be at all upset catches him by surprise, and he releases his grip. Kokichi steps back, and there’s an odd moment where he’s scared he’ll run off, a thief disappearing into the weak morning sun. But he just swings up onto his tiptoes, so they’re almost at eye-level for a moment, then drops back down, hands in his pockets. “I, uh. I liked the drawings.”

Kokichi glances sideways, carelessly. “Eh? I’m not sure I know what you mean, Shumai. What drawings?”

“I know it was you,” Shuichi sighs, and he gets another grin for it. “You’re the only one who uses that kind of pen. And you broke into my room, also. You need to stop doing that.” He doesn’t really mind, actually, but he can’t just come out and say that without it sounding weird.

But Kokichi- tricky, unreadable Kokichi, smirks like he saw through the statement clear as glass. “Okay, I’ll be sure to stop bothering you,” he says sweetly, lying. “Although I’m still not sure what you mean about all this pen business… doesn’t sound like me.”

“It’s exactly like you.” Shuichi doesn’t understand him at all. Kokichi, smiling, rocking sideways, shapes and color all over his face like a performer even at nine in the morning. Kokichi, sneaking in to do something… nice for him? Kokichi, who won’t own up to it. What does he want?  
Shuichi takes a guess. He bites his lip, then smiles. “Thank you,” he says, honestly. “It really cheered me up. And also guilted me into going to bed, too. It was really nice of you.”

Kokichi’s face goes blank, like whatever processor whirrs behind his eyes has short-circuited, and for a moment Shuichi wonders if he guessed wrong, if it really was just a joke after all, but then the liar rolls his eyes, stuffs his hands deeper in his pockets. “Geez, Shuichi, if I’d known you would get so sentimental about it I wouldn’t have done anything.” His eyes flick back up, still frowning, purple and playful even when his mouth is twisted into a pout, even when he’s lying through his teeth.

And Shuichi had really thought his awful, hopeless heart had calmed down after all the trauma and death- that he was over growing weak in the knees over a pretty face and someone talking to him with a modicum of kindness, but evidently he was wrong, because he looks down at Kokichi, who is wearing the ugliest bright orange hoodie and has red circles painted on his cheeks, who is still lying and playing around and is never clear about anything, even when he’s doing something nice, and Shuichi’s tell-tale heart thumps in his chest.

He freezes up, and he knows he’s staring like an idiot, staring down at Kokichi’s face, all the oddly-kind gestures floating through his head of the recent days, and he’s thinking _oh no. Oh no. Not now. Not him. Not when we’re trying to make something here._

Kokichi, far too observant (and Shuichi, far too obvious) cocks his head to the side, still playful. “Hey? You okay up there? Did I break you with my overwhelming kindness? I spent like five minutes on those, you know. There’s no need to go crying over it.”

Shuichi manages to shake himself out of it -somehow- and he wets his lips. His whole body feels hollow. “Ah… no, I just.” He clears his throat. “Thanks. It was really-” and he almost says _cute,_ and he also almost has a heart attack.

Kokichi frowns, staring at him, and then snorts. “Oh my god, Shuichi, pull yourself together. Go get a hug from Akamatsu or something, you’re working yourself too hard.” And then he bounces up on his tip toes to slap Shuichi’s shoulder, overly friendly, and continues down the hall, as if Shuichi isn’t in the middle of trying to keep his awful, relentless emotions in check.

Kokichi whistles as he goes, off-key, obnoxious, and Shuichi tries not to hit his head against the wall.

Games of chess. Arguments. Tiny, kind gestures. Kokichi, pulling everyone into the kitchen and making them talk. Kokichi, a bandage on his finger, laughingly telling Shuichi he stole his heart. Kokichi, broken and quiet on that first day they met again. Kokichi, listening to the same song on loop, sitting with his legs crossed. Shuichi, thinking about him whenever they don’t speak, whenever they do, large sections of his brain put aside just for thinking about Kokichi. 

They’re friends. They’re friends. And that was hard enough. Shuichi won’t do anything to ruin that. Kokichi is slow to trust, slow to even show any sign of care, and they’re both still healing, both just trying to get through this shitty fucking situation, and relationships- relationships are not on the cards at the moment. For anyone. Not even getting into the fact that Kokichi is a boy, and Shuichi is a boy, and even if- if in a million years, Kokichi with his bright colors and his makeup and how he teases Shuichi… even if he was that way inclined, the others would be- christ. No, Shuichi tells himself. Maki’s face flashes through his mind, Kaito’s, Himiko’s, everyone who doesn’t like Kokichi as much as they like him. Danganronpa, and what they’d say if they ever- god, if they ever-

He’s imagining the headlines when Kaede finds him, takes his hand and gently guides him to the bathroom, speaking in a soft tone that he can barely make out because he’s too busy panicking over a hypothetical.

“Shuichi, what’s wrong?” She asks him softly, leaning him against the wall and dabbing a damp cloth against his forehead.

Shuichi looks at her, and he knows that she- she would not begrudge him this. That Kaede is too kind to judge him, to let a secret like this get out.  
But there is no secret to get out. Shuichi is just seventeen, and stressed, and Kokichi is kind and confusing and entertaining. It’ll pass, because he won’t feed into it, won’t let it get anywhere. Kokichi doesn’t deserve that. Kaede doesn’t deserve that secret on her shoulders. Shuichi can’t let his feelings throw themselves at a wall and hope they stick. He looks Kaede in the eyes, and he brings a smile to his lips, and he tells himself it’ll be fine. He just won’t think about it. He’s not letting this go anywhere.

“Just worried about Danganronpa,” he tells her, and he sinks into her hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> featuring more gratuitous coffee scenes. making someone coffee is the height of romance and i will not budge on this point.  
> thank you to roaringorange on tumblr for the inspo for the scene with the post-its (and several other scene ideas that i may have to write now)  
> also featuring kokichi still avoiding gonta IM SORRY I PROMISE ILL HAVE THEM TALK SOON. ITS JUST HARDDDDD  
> also also featuring: kaede and her romantic tension with every single cast member. im sorry im WEAK for kaemiu but im also weak for....kaerumi and tenkaede and akamami and..... all of them. kaede has two hands and fifty girlfriends.


	8. as a result of being betrayed,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re all dressed up nice- even Kokichi, sitting to Shuichi’s left, draped over the arm of a couch, has been forced into one of Shuichi’s button-up shirts. They’re both pretty slender, so it fits okay, but the sleeves have been rolled up several times until they sit puffy around his wrists. Shuichi tries not to stare at it too much. It’s just a shirt. They’re just friends.  
> Kaede and Amami are in their neatest people-pleasing clothes, and Maki is wearing slacks and a coat. Even Kaito’s had both arms forced through his jacket. The energy is anxious, but they all try to pretend it’s not. Danganronpa has no control over them, and they’re a team. They chat, pretending to be more relaxed then they are, laughing about their last game of baseball and discussing upcoming tv dramas. They’re as prepared as they can be, ready to be dismissive and take charge and show Danganronpa that they’re not something to be trifled with. They’re not just teenagers- they’re the people who brought down their show. They’re ready.
> 
> And then Shirogane Tsumugi steps into the lobby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!TW for mention of past suicide attempts, specifically with pills (and also an emetophobia ment.) this happens in the first section, and is described from: "They’ve already had their major make-up chat." to "And then, again, when Kokichi apologized just a few days ago."
> 
> hi sorry this chapter is a bit short! i really was not vibing with it lol. i have no excuse, i just got impatient and started writing the next one instead of the one i actually had to post. on the bright side, that one should be out pretty soon!

Miu can talk whatever shit she likes, but Kokichi does not have any kind of feelings for Saihara Shuichi. He does not sit in his room with his string of colored lights and the same song playing and he does not think about him- at least, he doesn’t do this in any way that was different to how he thought about Shuichi before Miu decided to open her big mouth. 

Kokichi spends a bunch of his spare time editing Shuichi’s interview speeches and notes on VR crimes, and no one who does that could ever hold feelings for him. (The guy is a genius who misspells “reciprocation” in a different way every single time. How? Kokichi fixes it for him and he goes and throws in wild new characters that don’t even make sense phonetically.)  
The worst part is he can’t even complain about that to her, because she just gets a terribly smug look on her face and insists that the only reason Kokichi puts up with editing Saihara’s dumb bullshit essays is because he ~likes~ him, not because they’re actually pretty good speeches or because if he doesn’t help, Shuichi will burn himself out, or because Shuichi decided to call them friends which means he’s just stuck with Kokichi now, thanks.

It’s not… so bad, being stuck with someone. Because no matter what Kokichi tells himself, at this point he’s just had to admit that it goes both ways, that Shuichi clearly enjoys his company, and he enjoys Shuichi’s. The two of them play games together and discuss upcoming Danganronpa interviews, and Shuichi makes him coffee most days- one day, he shows up from a meeting with their lawyer and drops a bundle of syrups and sprinkles into Kokichi’s lap, looking very pleased with himself, and from that day on Kokichi gets, essentially, home-made frappuccinos in a variety of fruity flavors, because, apparently, Shuichi’s opinions on coffee are easily circumvented by his own desire to make people things. It is quite funny, though, to watch him staring intently at youtube videos as he froths milk, pulling faces as he pours matcha and strawberry syrups together. Kokichi comes over to bother him while he’s doing his schoolwork one day, and discovers that he’s taking an online barista course- just so he has some more flexible skills, he explains, visibly flustered, and Shuichi makes everyone coffee but a small, very foolish part of Kokichi, hopes he was thinking of him.

Kokichi doesn’t do school. He has no interest in finishing it- in his memories, he dropped out years ago, focused full-time on managing DICE. Obviously that’s not a super marketable skill: “pay me to gather up ten teenage runaways and commit crimes over the city.” Yeah, that would go down super well. Everyone else at least has something to market, even Yumeno, who he overheard talking quietly to Akamatsu about how she doesn’t know if she wants to perform for people again.  
Kokichi is smart, has always been smart, has always hated school. He has no patience for busy-work, for tests, for making himself palatable. He’ll do it when he has to, help Shuichi write sugar-sweet emails and fake his way out of therapy, but he _hates_ academia and has no intention of going back to it.

“So what’s your plan, then?” Miu had asked him, looking up from her physics project (stupid, unneccessary.)

He doesn’t have one. In his memory, he lived wherever he could find a place to squat, with a crew of clowns as backup. They caused trouble, and they stole, and they arranged city-wide treasure hunts, and they didn’t plan for the future because all that mattered was each other. He never received the Hope’s Peak memories that Shuichi and the others did- he remembered being approached by the government, an offer of sponsorship, safety for his gang. At the time, it had seemed too good to be true- all he had to do was accept a stupid title and the responsibility for his ‘organization’, to let them watch him fool around and inspire his friends and trick even the most adept of law enforcement. It was because they were smart, and they made trouble, and drew attention, he figured. He figured it would bite him in the ass, later, too, but at the time it had seemed worth it- hubris, probably, part of him attracted to the title, and DICE had backed him up, too, tickled pink by the idea that their own boss was an ultimate.  
Of course it had been too good to be true. Nothing about that was believable. The only reason he believed it was that he had the memories to back it up- and he still does, so distinct and clear that sometimes he thinks it’s real. 

Kokichi had grinned over at Miu, thinking of a different girl, one who wore a clown mask and worked wonders with a blow-torch. “Wing it.” 

And he’d almost been able to hear that ghost-girl’s laughter floating around his head, familiar as the creases on his hands. “Like always, huh, boss?”

It’s funny, because Kokichi plans for everything. Kokichi doesn’t know what to do when he’s not planning.

Kokichi copes. Kokichi always copes. He certainly doesn’t break down and shut himself in his room for days at a time.  
He’s in his room because he wants to be, not because he keeps seeing fake people pointing crossbows at him. He’s started keeping track of his hallucinations- they’re always people, sometimes silent, sometimes speaking, but ever anything else. No birds or objects or even funny, floating lights. If he looks close enough, he can see the way their edges warp and grow blurry- not like delusions, but like computer programs, something rendered not quite right. If he gets close enough he can see how the light doesn’t play on them like it does on everything else, the way their clothes aren’t shaded properly. His vision glitches, echoes of a simulation, and sometimes he gets trapped thinking he’s in just another layer of delusion, that he’s going to wake up any moment, that some bright light will flash in his eyes and remind him of some new lie. 

When Gonta knocks on his door, he almost thinks he’s dreaming that, too. Yet another simulated piece of guilt. But the Gonta he sees sometimes only cries. He never talks, because Kokichi’s brain can never figure out what he’d say. 

This Gonta speaks. This Gonta pushes the door open, and stares at how Kokichi is huddled up in his bed, and he says, quietly. “Gonta… I, I thought I would check up on you.”

Kokichi notes how he’s struggling to switch back to first-person, wonders if that’s something his therapist is trying to get him to do- to readjust to humanity. Hah. It’s really cruel, the past they gave him, almost as mean as Shinguji’s. And they didn’t even do the memory altering after he woke up like they did for the serial killer- probably because this one didn’t set them up for a line of lawsuits.  
He rolls over in his pile of blankets, draws himself up onto his knees. “I’m doing just fine, big guy.”

Gonta doesn’t leave. He looks around, almost anxiously, and his gaze settles on the chair pulled out by Kokichi’s desk. “Can I sit?”

Kokichi sighs, pulling the blanket over his eyes and taking in a breath. He really, really does not want to talk to Gonta.  
They’ve already had their major make-up chat. It happened after Kokichi woke up, a few days before his third attempt on his life. Gonta had cried a lot, told him that he forgave him, that he understood, that it was okay, and Kokichi, awful, pathetic, one of his worst memories, had cried, too. And then, three days later, Gonta caught him before he could stuff enough painkillers down his throat to make his liver burst. And Gonta had cried more, and made him puke, and Kokichi had just shaken and forced him to promise not to tell, because he could _not_ go back to solitary. Not right then.  
And then, again, when Kokichi apologized just a few weeks ago. It’s fine. They have nothing more to say to each other. Gonta is too nice, and has forgiven but not moved on, and Kokichi can’t say or do anything to fix it. 

“Sure, whatever you like,” he says, tugging the blankets down and focusing on the way the fabric scrapes over his nose. 

He can hear Gonta moving, tiny, careful footsteps in that big form, and can hear the way the chair groans when he sits down. “Thanks.” His voice still sounds the same. Exactly the fucking same. 

Kokichi says nothing. He’s not the one who came here, he doesn’t owe- well, he doesn’t need to do anything. He’s just going to sit here and keep doing what he was doing before Gonta showed up, his is keeping his eyes shut and thinking about what Danganronpa would do if he jumped off the top of this stupid building. (Probably nothing good. It would probably make life a lot more difficult for everyone else.)

"Ouma is... sad," Gonta says, after a while. 

"We're all sad, Gonta," he replies, no bite to his voice, completely blank. "It's why everyone keeps fighting."

"But nobody is fighting now," Gonta says, a softness to his voice that makes Kokichi ache, makes him think of every time in the game that Gonta came to check up on lonely Kokichi, who was mean in a way Gonta couldn't understand, couldn't fathom why he was so cruel with no reason to be. 

Kokichi finally tugs the blanket back, letting out a slow breath. "We will, though. We'll all fight, eventually. Miu was right. We'll fight, and we'll fall out, and we'll start arguing and resenting each other, and then we just... stop talking."

Gonta is quiet for a moment. He is so different now, and Kokichi tells himself that it's just because they're out of the simulation, but he knows he forced Gonta to grow, yanked that flower so it had to dig its roots in. This particular trauma, that's all Kokichi. "If Kokichi thinks Miu is right, Gonta- I wonders why Ouma got everyone to say sorry."

Kokichi halts mid self-deprecating thought, still pulling at the blanket. He doesn't really have a good answer. "I was sick of everyone arguing, I guess."

"Gont-" A breath. The giant is clearly struggling to break that programmed habit, especially now that he's a bit emotional. "I thinks- think Ouma is nicer than he pretends."

Kokichi squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Hearing that burns, a cross to a vampire, and he shrugs off his blanket and goes to stare at the sun. "Gonta. I'm not nice." He curls his fingers up- it's important that Gonta knows this, he cannot... he cannot keep having him think the best of Kokichi, think that Kokichi is something... kind. He's not. He's never been kind. "Look, it's- it's sweet that you think that, and everything, but I'm not nice. I'm not good, either." Case in point- it's far too hard for him to be... not a dick. He's struggling to get the words out, struggling not to lie. The more nervous he gets, the harder it is to stop himself from filling in the gaps with something untrue, just to scratch that itch. "If you keep thinking like that, you're going to start thinking that- that what I did to you was fair, or something. And then you'll start thinking that your death was justified, let- let alone everyfuckingthing else." Kokichi lets out a breath, and he's angry, and he has no right to be. "Nothing I did to you was justifiable."   
It's true. He knows it's true. He'd do it all again in a heartbeat, he knows he would. If he were thrown back into that situation- he'd still do whatever it took to end it. To shove it right into Danganronpa's stupid faces. He regrets it all, hates himself for it, knows it was wrong, and still he knows that if he didn't have the knowledge he did now, no matter how much "character growth" the others thought they'd seen, he would do it all again. This Kokichi is the exact same Kokichi who woke up in his locker. You can't overwrite programming just like that.

Gonta is quiet, for too long. "Ouma was trying to st-"

"Ouma is a liar," he says, almost spits it. "Don't trust anything I say, ever again, Gonta."

Another pause. Kokichi is good at reading people, Kokichi always knows what their faces mean- but right now, he's trapped, has no idea what Gonta's solemn expression means. 

"Gonta will," he says, still looking just as serious, and he doesn't stumble over his own name. Kokichi just blinks at him. "Because... Gonta can choose to. Gonta chooses to trust Ouma. Gonta... I think Ouma is still a friend." The giant inhales, his whole, heavy frame shaking, and then he grips his own hands, stares determinedly at Kokichi. "I think Ouma feels bad about what he did."

Kokichi sits on the bed, swaddled up in blankets, frozen. "Gonta, that doesn't..." He closes his eyes. "That doesn't mean anything. Alcoholics feel bad about drinking. They go and do it again, anyway."

When he opens his eyes again, Gonta's smile is too warm, butter-melting. "Then let's not see the end of the world again," he says. "Gonta thinks... it was a pretty specific situation."

A laugh is ripped from his throat, despite himself. Gonta smiles wider at it, and Kokichi clears his throat. "Wow, big guy," he says, changing the subject, transparent, obvious lies. "Those are some big words."

"Gonta- I am working hard at my school," Gonta says, a little sheepishly. "Shinguji helps me, sometimes."

"Huh." Weird pair, that. Kokichi can imagine them, a weird goth and a gentle giant crammed together at a desk, Shinguji just happy to have someone listening to his lilting voice, Gonta happy for help. "How's it going?"

"Very good," Gonta says. He pauses, then laughs. "Gonta's brain is good at science and math. But he has trouble with the language, sometimes."   
Kokichi's about to come up with a response to that that _isn't_ rude, when Gonta leans forward, still smiling. "But Gonta came to talk about Ouma, today."

Kokichi tips his head up to stare at the ceiling. Everything feels drained from him. He's not sure what to say, what would get it through this dummy, this too-kind idiot's head that Kokichi deserves to feel like garbage, sometimes. "What do you want?" He asks, flatly. "Just... give me something and I'll do it. I guess I'm in your debt and everything." Is that how life debts work? It seems silly to consider murder a form of debt. 

Gonta considers it carefully for a moment. "Gonta wants... Ouma to come and talk to the others. Even when he's feeling bad." He pauses, as Kokichi is wishing to sink into his own sheets and disappear. "Even if it's just Saihara or Miu. It doesn't have to be Gonta." 

Good, because he would never, in a million years, burden Gonta with a selfish self-pity. "Okay big guy, sure. If that'll make you feel better." He closes his eyes, lies. He'll just have to start being more stealthy about when he's feeling down. 

"And... Ouma should go to therapy, too," Gonta says, softly. "Gonta... I think it's very good. Not like in Danganronpa. There are actual nice people out here."

Kokichi drags his hands over his face. He has no doubt there are nice people here, who will be able to do nothing for him. Meanwhile, there'll be plenty of other, shitty therapists, who are ready and willing to observe him like a charade, or make no effort to empathize, or minimize his experiences. No thanks. Maybe, if he tells them about his fucked up hallucinations, they'll institutionalize him forever. "Okay, Gonta, sure," he murmurs. His voice feels far too faint.

Gonta is quiet. Then he stands up, and his voice is faint, too, far too quiet. "Can... can I ask for one last thing?"

"Shoot," Kokichi says as he rubs his eyes, because he's already lying about the others, what's one more? Maybe he can actually do this one.

"Can Gonta hug you?"

Kokichi pauses, knuckles pressed against his eyes. It's just a hug. It's just one hug. It's for Gonta. He owes him this- if he can't do the other tasks, he can at least do this one. "Sure," he says, and it comes out empty.

Gonta steps back. "O-only if it's okay! Gonta doesn't want to make-"

"Shut up," Kokichi says, because he can't stand it, can't stand to hear Gonta trying to comfort him, and before he can think about it anymore, he runs over and throws his arms around the idiot, idiot dumbass who went along with his stupid plan, who listened to him when he said they'd all be better off dead, and he buries his face in Gonta's chest like he did when he was playing around, when he was playing the fool, playing the child, annoying to everyone but the patient entomologist, when Gonta was the only person who put up with him and the only person Kokichi considered a friend, even if he said it mockingly, laughing at him to his face while Gonta just smiled. 

Immediately, Gonta's arms come around him. He's like one of those stupidly enormous teddy bears, like a toy built for a spoiled child. "It's okay," he says, so fucking serene and gentle and good, and Gonta is so good it hurts. He's everything Kokichi's not. Naive, kind, forgiving. Big. Kokichi clings onto him like he's an equal kind of idiot, and Gonta lifts him off the ground like he's a fucking baby and cradles him, and Kokichi just- "Don't cry," Gonta says, rubbing his back. "It's okay. Gonta forgives Ouma."

"I'm not crying," Kokichi says, his voice far too high and wavery. And then, "I killed you."

"Akamatsu killed Amami," Gonta says, softly. "And they are still friends."

Kokichi opens his mouth to argue that Akamatsu didn't technically kill Amami, and then he realizes that he didn't technically kill Gonta, and he stays quiet and does not sniff. "I didn't just kill you. I tricked you and betrayed you and made you kill someone else. That's a hundred times worse."

For a moment, Gonta is quiet, still holding Kokichi like he weighs nothing. "If... if Ouma had just killed Gonta himself, it would have been better," he admits, quietly. "Gonta wishes- wishes more than. More than life, that he had not done something so awful. Sometimes, Gonta feels like his life is ruined, thinking about it." His voice grows a little distant, like he's describing someone else entirely, and Kokichi wants to puke.   
And then Gonta lifts him up, higher, until he's holding him at eye level, and he smiles. "But Gonta knows he is not the only one who feels that way. Gonta thinks.... Gonta thinks that Tojo and Akamatsu, they are still good people. And Momota... Momota is just like the sort of gentleman Gonta wants to be. And he killed Ouma." Kokichi is silent, staring at him, and Gonta keeps smiling. "Gonta thinks they are all good people, and he talks to his therapist, and he says... he says that Gonta is a good person, too. And even if Gonta doesn't believe that, he reminds himself he... he still can be. He can still be like Momota, and Tojo, and Akamatsu."

"You're better than all of them," Kokichi whispers. "You're nicer, and more loyal, and you tried s-so hard." He has to squeeze his eyes shut, because the shit coming out of his mouth makes him feel ill. He thinks about that trial, that godawful trial. 

It was meant to go like this: Gonta defends himself. Gonta does a bad job, and implicates himself, because he's _Gonta._ Kokichi tells him he did his best, and plays the tortured ally- he tries to cover for him, but who believes the liar? Before Gonta dies, Kokichi gets a moment to genuinely, really apologize, to try and send him off a little more easily. Once he's gone, Kokichi takes a breath, and steels himself, and then he plays the mastermind and he doesn't look back.  
And then Gonta doesn't remember, and Gonta doesn't slip up, and Kokichi has to play more and more of a dick, wondering why Gonta isn't calling him out on it, and then he straight up accuses him, and Gonta still doesn't slip up, and Kokichi has to lead the whole fucking trial to Gonta and he is so angry, he's shaking, he's angry with himself and with fucking backstabber Miu, and with Gonta, who won't argue back, won't implicate himself, is making Kokichi do everything, is making Kokichi convict him. He takes vicious, open joy in tearing Momota and Shuichi apart, in watching them fight over Gonta's innocence. He means it, when he calls them all idiots for falling for the worst performance of his life. By the time Gonta is tied to that stake, he's numb, and it's only when a mantis is plunging through his torso that he realizes he isn't numb at all. 

"Gonta cared about his friends," he says, gently patting Kokichi's hair, then slowly leaning down to set him on the floor. Part of Kokichi aches a bit when Gonta moves away. "He still does. All of them. Even Ouma."

"I'm sorry," Kokichi whispers, and he's said it before, but he'll never be able to say it enough.

Gonta nods, and his eyes are sad and full as he moves to the door. "I forgive you."

And then he's gone, and Kokichi can't tell if he wants to call him back or collapse on the floor forever. He decides to compromise, by sitting down on the floor for about ten minutes before heading out. He feels dazed, woozy... any other synonyms for out of it? Dreamlike. Yeah. Everything is a bit dreamlike, nowadays. Not quite simulation, not quite real.  
He gets about five feet down the hallway before he bumps, quite literally into his favourite detective.

“Hey, what happened?” Shuichi asks, his voice dipping into something soft. Kokichi can’t look away for some reason, the genuine concern in his face, similar and different to Gonta’s all at once.

He swallows, heavy, and feels his throat constrict. “Just… just spoke to Gonta.”

“You did?” Shuichi blinks, genuine surprise soon sinking into relief. “That’s great, Kokichi. How did it go?”

Kokichi finally shifts his gaze up again, and he feels an irrational rush of anger that he shoves back, because he won’t fight with Shuichi again. Not right now. Not after he’s just made… whatever kind of idiot promise he made. "As well as it could've, I guess."

Shuichi reaches down, squeezes his arm, gently. "I'm sure he really appreciated it."

"Yeah." Kokichi closes his eyes, opens them again. Nothing's changed- still just Shuichi, unsmiling but gentle, touching his arm like he isn't repulsed by everything Kokichi's done. "It was super easy, really. I've already apologized, so I don't know what his deal is."

Shuichi stares at him for a moment, brow furrowing, and then he releases his arm. "I have a lot of issues with atonement," he says. "I feel- I mean, you know. I feel really guilty. I want to make it all up to you guys. Part of what helps with that is... talking to you. Helping out in small ways." He laughs, a puff of air out his nose. "Obviously I'm not suggesting you take on my workload, but- I think talking to Gonta is a really good thing. For both you." The detective pats his arm again, just gently, then moves away. "I've got to go meet with Kaede about her next interview, but you can come see me later, okay? I've got a new project I'd like your opinion on."

"Yeah, okay," Kokichi says, feeling just as not-present as before. He watches Shuichi leave, shifting a bag (of files and folders, no doubt) higher on his shoulder, glancing back to wave as he turns the corner.

He thinks of Gonta. He turns and goes back into his room.

Kokichi flops, full-bodied, into his bed and spends a long time just breathing. The edges of his vision go fuzzy, and when he sits up, he can see not-him standing by his bed again, floating and fake and just staring. Signifying nothing.  
He sighs and climbs off his bed, and then he goes over to his laptop and opens an email.

_to: Tsuda, victim rep  
from: ouma kokichi  
Subject: I expect confidentiality.  
Body: Hello, it’s Ouma. Would it be possible to arrange a meeting to discuss potential therapy? Thanks. _

\--

They all know that a Danganronpa representative is coming today- it’s been in the books for a week. People fighting, hyping themselves up, tension dissolving and building up again, and they’re back to unstable peace. They all know a Danganronpa representative is coming, and that’s enough to have them feeling a little more prepared as they sit in the lobby of the Foundation headquarters, Tsuda and a few other personnel waiting as support.  
They’re all dressed up nice- even Kokichi, sitting to Shuichi’s left, draped over the arm of a couch, has been forced into one of Shuichi’s button-up shirts. They’re both pretty slender, so it fits okay, but the sleeves have been rolled up several times until they sit puffy around his wrists. Shuichi tries not to stare at it too much. It’s just a shirt. They’re just friends.  
Kaede and Amami are in their neatest people-pleasing clothes, and Maki is wearing slacks and a coat. Even Kaito’s had both arms forced through his jacket. The energy is anxious, but they all try to pretend it’s not. Danganronpa has no control over them, and they’re a team. They chat, pretending to be more relaxed then they are, laughing about their last game of baseball and discussing upcoming tv dramas. They’re as prepared as they can be, ready to be dismissive and take charge and show Danganronpa that they’re not something to be trifled with. They’re not just teenagers- they’re the people who brought down their show. They’re ready.

And then Shirogane Tsumugi steps into the lobby.

Every single person tenses up as she looks around, smiling, serene, false, her hair bunched in pigtails, wearing the exact same uniform she had in-game. 

Immediately, everyone freezes. Kaede, sitting on Shuichi’s right, her hands folded in her lap, grows so tense that he thinks she’s turned to stone, and Rantaro’s gaze fixes on the girl so firmly that it looks like he might be trying to kill her with his gaze alone. Kokichi, on Shuichi’s other side, inhales sharply.

“Well,” Tsumugi- Shirogane says, looking so much like an old friend, someone Shuichi cared for, would have given his own life to save. “Don’t you all look smart!”

“What are you doing here.” Shuichi stands up from the couch, all feigned-calm forgotten. He is suddenly _angry,_ in a way he hasn’t been in a while- not since he’s gotten out, actually. He’s been furious with Danganronpa, he’s been stressed and mad and close to screaming at the next person who speaks with him, but he has not been this angry since he was standing in a class trial with the death of his friends behind him. “This seems like a show of bad faith.” It comes out bitter, laughing, and he glances over to Tsuda, who looks just as surprised as him. “Danganronpa sends out their mastermind to do business?”

Tsu- Shirogane giggles, and her whole face looks warm and inviting. “I told you I was an employee, Saihara-kun,” she says sweetly. “Unlike Rantaro over there, I joined them officially before the game even started.”

Amami’s eyes narrow. “Don’t act like we’re friends,” he says, his usually mellow voice as cold as ice. “We both know you feel nothing for anyone here.”

Shirogane sets down the briefcase she was carrying and brushes down her skirt, letting out a soft hum as if she’s thinking. “Oh, no hard feelings, really. It was all just a simulation.”

“You must be really stupid if you think anyone’s going to believe you,” says Kokichi- unlike her, the light, playful quality to his voice isn’t even trying to hide his animosity. If anything, it’s playing into it. 

For a moment, Shirogane looks over to him, and her face twitches, just a bit. Shuichi steps sideways, drawing her attention, a tiny bit protective over the friend who helped them bring the game down. “Why are you here?” He asks, and he only feels safe once her eyes are off Kokichi, looking back at him with a completely convincing friendliness. Almost. “Danganronpa was vague about the terms of this visit. We do have the right to escort you off Foundation grounds if you behave out of line.”

“Oh, please, I’m here to help.” She tilts her head to the side in such an obviously practiced, cute gesture that it makes Shuichi want to snap her neck. “I’m here to let you know that Danganronpa is delivering your rewards! Of course, there’ll need to be some correspondence to sort everything out, but I’m sure that Saihara-kun can handle it, right? He usually does.”

“If you’re trying to stir up discord, it won’t work,” Maki says quietly, her voice like flint. “We all trust Shuichi. We’ll help him if he needs it.”

Himiko jumps up from her seat with Chabashira and crosses over, moving to stand next to Shuichi’s side. He glances down at her, and feels a little soothed by her small smile, even if the same anger he feels is burning behind her eyes. 

Shirogane’s face shifts again, just for a moment, but she keeps smiling. She’s probably in a lot of trouble, Shuichi realizes, all because of ‘her’ cast, the season she lost control of.  
Good. 

“Well, let me see.” She picks up the briefcase again and carries it over to the coffee table in the center of the room, setting it down and thumbing in a passcode before flipping it open. Fourteen white-and-black envelopes sit inside, their names written in mocking red print. “Here we are! These should contain the details of the bank accounts Danganronpa set up for you, and the money inside. They should also have your legal identification- name changes and all, so ‘Harukawa Maki’ really does exist, now.” She laughs, picking one up and offering it out to the girl, who makes no move to take it. “Oh! And I also forgot, you all have a crate filled with storage that Danganronpa kept for you prior to the VR experience. We always give the option to leave belongings at home or with family, of course, but it looks like all of you opted to use our storage facilities.” She sets the letter back down with the others and stands up again, clasping her hands together. “Any details of previous occupancy or emergency contacts will be in there, too, but I cannot promise that you left anyone for us to contact.” Her smile grows just a touch more satisfied, then. “And, of course, those are all the details we can legally give you. If you had someone who was, ah, also subject to memory reprogramming, with us or with a third party, we will not have their details. But that’s a one in a million chance, really, so there’s nothing to worry about there.”  
Her voice is far too satisfied for Shuichi’s liking. Nobody moves to get the letters even as she watches, smiling. “Well? Go on, no need to fight over them. That’s where your money is! Your whole lives, really, detailed in those letters. Everything you thought was worth keeping.”

Kaede stands up, suddenly, and stalks over to the briefcase. She begins sorting through the letters, picking up all of them, and then she passes them around, murmuring the names to each person she hands them out to. When Shuichi takes his, their fingers graze, and she looks at him, and they hold that gaze for just a moment before she moves on, but in that moment it is all fire. 

When everyone has their letters, he crosses his arms. "Is that all? You look like you have something more to say."

"Oh, no, not at all," she says breezily. "Just that! Please have a good day, everyone." She waves a hand at them all, almost dismissively, as she picks up her briefcase.

Amami narrows his eyes. "You can't expect us to believe that."

"Really." Shirogane clicks the case shut and gives them all a beatific smile. "I have no further business with you." She bows, and turns for the door.

They all stare at her. Kaede visibly relaxes. Amami looks twice as tense.  
Shuichi inhales, sharply, and hurries after her. "Shirogane."

He catches her at the door, and follows her out into the main building. She doesn't stop walking until they're separate from the others, and then she smiles at him. "Saihara-kun. Is there something I can do?"

"Why did you come?" He asks her. She blinks, innocently, and he fights back the urge to throttle her. "You showing up here... it's a threat. We're not stupid."

Shirogane turns to him, fully, her briefcase clasped tight between her fingers. "The way you choose to interpret my appearance is your choice." She tilts her head. "Is that all?"

"What do you want." It's the most frustrating interrogation he's ever conducted. It's worse than every class trial at once. He hates her, hates her, hates her, in a way he thinks he had forgotten how to since waking up. The others made him mellow, calm, too safe to remember this. 

She clicks her tongue. "Such bad faith. Shuichi,” she says, calmly, gently, like they’re friends, like she- like she knows him. She leans in close, voice dropping to a whisper, and for a moment he can see something in her eyes, violent and desperate and angry. “I will do anything to get Danganronpa back.”

He looks right back at her, his heart twisting in his chest. "Not happening," he hisses. 

"Then, for the time being, I suppose we are enemies." She stands up, stares at him, any trace of friendliness gone. "If I didn't know better, I'd offer for you to join us. You could do really well as a spokesperson, you know. But we didn't write you that way, I guess." 

"You didn't write me to do a lot of things," Shuichi replies, clenching his hands. "You know, I'm surprised they let the world's worst mastermind continue working for them."

Her eyes flash, just for a moment, and he's back in the trial room, and he is genuinely, cripplingly afraid. "You don't know what you're talking about, Saihara."

"Which is it?" He whispers it despite his fear, because he can't not, can't stop himself from being more angry than afraid. Danganronpa made many mistakes, and their worst was letting him get numb and bitter. "Did you ruin the last season? Or did we? Because it seems to me, either you couldn't control your own characters, or we weren't able to be controlled. It's one of us, right?"

For a moment, he thinks she might kill him, really and truly kill him, right there. But Shirogane takes a breath, and straightens up, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Neither," she informs him coldly. 

"Kokichi was a better mastermind than you," Shuichi says, fiercely. "At least he could get us to do what he wanted."

"And look how well that turned out for him," Shirogane says, seemingly back in control of her voice, keeping it sweet and sugary even as she tries to burn him with her eyes. "He's the most broken out of all of you, even Akamatsu." She shifts her briefcase into one hand, and turns. "Now, I really do have a job to get to. Please try to remember who you're dealing with, Saihara- we're more powerful than you think."

Shuichi watches her go, and he is boiling with anger, and he's dripping away, and he's suddenly faced with how much he missed Tsumugi, the Tsumugi he thought he knew, who was shy and uncertain and always had faith in the group.  
And he knows that it doesn't matter how powerful Danganronpa is, because their fans turned away, in that last season. Because their fans are split across the internet, and because they are preparing for the lawsuits to come in, and they are _scared._

A few days later, Shuichi and a few others go to collect their belongings from the Danganronpa storage facilities. The Foundation is willing to store them for a while, but now that their money has arrived, there's a gentle suggestion of everyone... moving out. Some people react excitedly, others with quiet anticipation. Shuichi can't really tell how he feels about it, being apart from the others.   
But for the moment, they go, and they find their own storage unit while Foundation members pack up stuff for the others who couldn't/wouldn't come. Kaede squeezes his hand before she darts away to her own. 

Shuichi thinks of the breathless, sweaty little freak who stood in that audition tape and proclaimed his love for Danganronpa. He thinks of the dark obsessions that flit through his mind sometimes, the forgotten urges that pop up in his head, the vague memories that exist only in his dreams.   
He powers forward and unlocks the crate.

It is... simultaneously everything and nothing he expected. There's a bunch of Danganronpa merch that he thinks vindictively of burning, a collection of weird slasher films- some of which have somewhat interesting plots, that he packs in his bag, and some of which look like borderline snuff- and there's also several stored outfits that he faintly recognizes, including several baseball hats, one of which he grabs, and an unfamiliar uniform.   
But there's also a set of nice chairs, and a box of books he doesn't know, and a set of fancy candles and a music box that plays the beginnings of the swan lake theme, and several sets of earrings and... a few rings, which alert Shuichi to the hole in his septum that he's never noticed before, and he spends a few moments having such intense dysmorphia as he tries to align up the image of himself with the person he used to be, that he thinks he might faint for a moment.   
And there's also a letter, tucked into a secret drawer in the music box that actually isn't too hard to find.

Shuichi winds up the music box and lets it play while he reads it, leaning up against one of the nice chairs and listening to the melody.

_Dear whoever you are,  
_ _I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but this is a letter from your past self. If you're reading this, you got into Danganronpa and found this music box, and they either haven't noticed this note or decided it was safe. We're not really meant to do this, leave notes behind, so I'm going to try and be pretty vague just to make sure.  
_ _So, I can't tell you my name, or anything, but that doesn't really matter! You're a whole new person now, and I know things probably look pretty dark, but I believe you can make the best of it! You don't know this, but this was a huge opportunity for me. Trust me, I was fully aware going in what it would entail. And I know that you're probably not super happy right now, but you'll get through it. It's better than what you had before, so just- make the most of it, okay? You're alive, and that's what matters.  
_ _And I've had to rewrite this several times to be safe, so you better listen. You've got someone important to you out there. They're... the only person that matters, really. Well, there's someone else, too, but she's... it's complicated. I don't want to rewrite this again. You don't have parents, don't try to contact your extended family, and you didn't really have friends. You just had them, and one of them was just your dealer, really.  
_ _But this important person- if you've got nothing else, stay alive for them, okay? I mean it, even if you died horribly or you murdered someone and feel bad about it, even if you survived only to sacrifice yourself for hope, no matter what you did or what you regret, you've got to stay alive until you find them. I'd tell you here, but I really want to make sure this letter gets through if someone sees it. So just trust me, okay? They're worth it, they really are. And I know they're still around, don't worry about that.  
_ _That's all, really. Just, stay alive, make the best of things. You were in a really famous tv show! I'm kind of jealous, frankly, that I won't... I mean, I'll get to experience it. That's just stupid. We're the same person! I hope it was fun. I hope I was good at my role. Danganronpa's a pretty big deal- you should be proud, no matter what. I know that I would be. Will be. Ha.  
Yours sincerely, I Probably Shouldn't Write Down My Real Name._

Kaede finds him twenty minutes later, still staring at the note. "You alright?" She asks, gently, testing the waters.

Shuichi looks up, then folds up the paper carefully and tucks it into his pockets. "Yeah," he says, frowning. "Just got a weird note from my past self."

"Ha." Kaede laughs, softly, then crosses over to lean against him. "I hate her. Whoever she was. Whoever I used to be." 

"Yeah." Shuichi thinks back to the note, and feels an irrational stab of anger. Better than what, dumbass? What the hell could this be better than? 

He's still thinking about the note, when they get back, and when he slots it back into the music box and redecorates his room, and when he kneels down and tries to cram the new books into his bookshelf.   
This mysterious person... he's not going to look for them. At least, not right now, not while he's got so much other shit going on. Sure, part of him keeps thinking back to it, anxiously, but it sounds like they'll be around no matter what, right? And if they're that important, they'll probably come looking for him. And if they don't... it's someone his past self cared about. He's not sure what he should expect- if he even wants to meet them.

He's sure he will, though. Eventually.

\--

So, on the bright side, things improve significantly. Kokichi gets therapy, and he hates it and it sucks, but after switching a few therapists, his fourth is pretty frank with him in a way he appreciates, and tells him to take his time, and to treat their first few sessions as a place to vent more than anything, which is... okay. He lies a lot, because he can't really help himself, but she doesn't mind. They get their money, and suddenly, everyone has… prospects. And possibilities. And they don’t have to stay stuck in place, in protective custody or in the hell that was the Danganronpa compound. Everyone lightens, as the possibility of really, truly moving on becomes clear. Things really look up. 

The downside is that Kokichi makes a mistake.

The mistake is that, after they’ve all been informed that they’re free to go and there’s fussing and drama about what’s going on, where they’ll stay, what to do with their money, people start to flood out. Amami goes, quickly, grabs a flat with (to everyone’s surprise) Shinguji, and the two of them stay close by- often popping back in to see the others, Amami and Akamatsu chatting like old friends over tea while Shinguji hovers awkwardly. Yumeno follows Chabashira and Yonaga to a little flat, and then Miu scurries off to find herself a place near the campus of the university everyone knows she’ll be attending as soon as she finishes the tests for school. Tojo stays, but Hoshi heads out and gets a tiny apartment and a cat, and he invites everyone over to cram up and coo over it. A week later, Gonta moves in with him, and suddenly Kokichi spends a lot of time there with the fat, spoiled cat, watching bug documentaries. Surprisingly, Harukawa and Momota don’t live together- Harukawa joins Himiko and her girls, and Momota gets a place close by, visiting the Foundation quarters frequently to speak to Shuichi and Akamatsu.  
Kokichi stays, because he can’t quite imagine what he’d do with himself if he was left on his own. And Shuichi stays, too, probably because he’s already working all the time with the foundation and also out of some weird, twisted sense of duty, waiting for all the others to leave.

The mistake is that one day, they’re hanging out and it’s just them because Akamatsu is visiting Amami, and everyone knows she’s thinking of getting a studio downtown near the music school, and Shuichi says, capturing a rook, super casually, “we should move in together.”

And the mistake is that Kokichi, suddenly realizing that he’s two moves away from being checkmated and is royally fucked, says, “yeah.”

And the mistake is that they don’t just leave it at that, but laughingly discuss what their flat would be like- two bedrooms, obviously, scheduled bathroom times, alternating nights cooking. They could buy a proper, fancy chess table, one with the board engrained on top, and Kokichi could play his music on loop but only after seven, and if Shuichi got too sucked into his work, Kokichi could drag him out. They could bring all their coffee syrup and get some nice teapots and split a gaming system. The mistake is that a few days later, when Akamatsu hesitantly suggests she might move out, Kokichi says, “I guess we might, as well,” and everyone takes that to mean ‘we, together’ and Kokichi doesn’t correct them, and then Momota is recommending places close by and Akamatsu is instructing them about budgeting, and somehow Shuichi and Kokichi end up leaving the foundation quarters not long after Akamatsu herself, and they move in together. 

And then all of a sudden, Kokichi isn’t ‘villain, mean Kokichi, liar and trickster who can’t be trusted,’ but ‘Shuichi’s roommate, Kokichi. Shuichi’s friend. Kokichi who comes to play baseball with us and hangs out with Gonta and dyes his hair purple.’  
The worst mistake is that he lets himself be okay with it, just a bit.

Shuichi and Kokichi are good roommates. They fight, but only over things that are easily resolved, like Momota is hanging around for too long when Kokichi wants the flat to be quiet, or when Kokichi moves the pile of documents that were obviously very important to a different table and now Shuichi has executive dysfunction because of him. Once, they have a big Trauma argument and don’t talk for two days, but living together becomes kind of difficult when you aren’t speaking, and eventually Shuichi buys a tray of eclairs and offers them as a peace gift, and they manage to talk it out a little bit (Shuichi’s guilt, Kokichi’s guilt, how frustrating they find the other’s guilt interrupting their own. It’s fairly typical.) 

Kokichi knows to expect more fights, that you can’t just stick two people with a history like theirs together and expect things to be hunky-dory, but it’s. It’s worth it. From a completely sensible perspective, they both save money like this, and Shuichi is probably the only person he could stand living with for an extended period of time except Miu but he thinks it’s good that she’s got her own space to focus on her projects.

“Hey.” 

Kokichi looks over his shoulder. He’s standing on the balcony (they have a balcony, it’s the best part of the flat and it’s why he puts up with the sub-par plumbing) in a t shirt and shorts, staring at the buildings around them. He gives a grin and lifts a hand from the railing in a brief wave.

Shuichi walks over and stands next to him, and they’re quiet together. Then Shuichi shudders. “Oof, I get the worst deja-vu out here.”

“You do?” Kokichi tears his eyes away from the skyline, which is not the most majestic view but is still pleasant. “I do, too, sometimes. I think it’s about being up high, or something.”

Shuichi nods, a little furrow in his brow. Kokichi wants to lean over and smooth it out. Dangerous. Many mistakes were made, that landed him here today with Shuichi, vulnerable and open and feeling like he doesn’t have the energy to pull his walls back up. “I always end up craving cigarettes,” he says, half-laughing. “I’ve never- I mean, I don’t remember smoking, so I assume it’s the me from before.”

“Oh god, don’t infect me,” Kokichi moans, flopping his arms over the railing. “I don’t need any forgotten addictions popping up right now. I’m already close to stealing Momota’s adderall.”

“Neither of you need that,” Shuichi says, all soft laughter. “Please let him be medicated in peace. I don’t even want to think about you on stimulants.”

“So that’s a no to meth, then?” The joking comes easily, tattooed against his teeth. He turns sideways, leaning against the railing, one arm folded over it and the other hanging down. 

Shuichi’s eyes crease when he smiles. He always looks a little weary, nowadays, like he’s finally allowing the exhaustion of the killing game to show on his face. But he smiles like it comes naturally, easily. “You’re enough as it is on caffeine alone.”

Kokichi rolls his eyes. “Coward.” Shuichi snorts, ducks his head down as he laughs, a stray lock of hair slipping over his eyes. Neither of them have had a cut in a while, and Shuichi’s hair now curls around his jaw, softening out his face a little more, his sunken, tired eyes not quite so vampiric. Kokichi touches his own hair, still staring at Shuichi’s, fiddles with the ends. His has gotten so long that it drapes past his shoulders when wet- but it always dries sticking up, twiddled into a mess of fluff and stray hairs, twisted around his fingers as he works. 

Shuichi shifts under his gaze, a little nervous, glances away. “Shall we order in tonight?”

“Huh?” Kokichi lets his hair slip through his fingers, blinks. When he looks up at the sky, it seems dimmer than he’d last noted, pink and orange stretching through the clouds. Is that the beginning of a sunset? He thought it was still afternoon. “Ah, shit, it’s my turn to cook, right?”

Shuichi just smiles, casual and carefree. “Yeah, but you look busy.” Kokichi scoffs, turns back to keep staring out at the horizon. Busy? Just watching the sky, the neighbour’s cat, the pot plants on the wall beneath them. Lazy, more like it. “Besides, I’m not feeling like doing dishes. I’ll pay.”

“It’s my night to do dinner, I’ll pay,” Kokichi says, as if money means anything to them- neither of them with jobs, too much money for teenagers stashed up in their bank accounts. The only reason he’s not bankrupt is the fact he’s blocked his own card from going over a certain amount in a week. 

Shuichi shrugs a shoulder, easy, casual, friendly. “I’ll pay next time, then. What are you feeling?”

He turns to look at the sky again, sinking against the railing and leaning his chin into his own hand. “Something spicy.”

“Of course.” Shuichi laughs, then hesitates. His hand flicks forward, slightly, then he shakes his head and moves away. “I’ll, uh- I’ll go order.”

Shuichi ends up paying, after all, calling Kokichi back inside after a period of time that feels like hours and only seconds all at once. When they finally eat, sitting on the floor of their lounge with something mindless playing on the television, the sky has gone light purple and dusky, and Kokichi has mosquito bites all over his wrists and ankles, little vampire bites that he scratches at all through dinner. Shuichi got dessert, too, and Kokichi picks at pastry with ice cream dripping over his fingers as the detective applies some kind of cooling cream to the bites. Kokichi takes to opportunity to grab Shuichi’s arm, bare because it’s a t-shirt kind of day, sticky and spring even in the evening. He turns it over, stares at the left wrist.

Shuichi lets him look, even when Kokichi smears ice cream over his skin. “It’s getting better,” he insists. “I’ve been- trying the ice cube trick.”

Kokichi knows, because he’s found Shuichi in the kitchen with both hands full of ice, his mind full of self-blame, probably, so distracted he doesn’t notice Kokichi creeping out again. It is getting better, but Shuichi still scratches himself. There are old scars on his arms, faint, probably treated by Danganronpa, things that never existed in the simulation but exist outside of it, hyper-present.  
He’s got scars, too, though, ones that he never remembers committing but must have, littered around his thighs. His are thin, almost polite lines. Shuichi has tiny, circular burns. 

There’s nothing to say, really, but Kokichi can’t help filling in empty space with meaningless words. “You look like you’ve been spending too much time with Hoshi’s ungodly cat.”

Shuichi laughs, shifting nervously. He’s always nervous, even when he’s relaxed. “I think that’s more up your alley, really.”

Kokichi tsks, grabbing the bite-cream from the floor and staring at the label. “I’m not really an animal person.” It says it’s for scrapes, insect bites, and bruises. He figures it’s good enough, and wipes his sticky, sugary fingers on his shorts before squeezing the liquid over his fingers, drawing circles over Shuichi’s raw wrist with white paint.

“That’s just not true,” Shuichi says, his voice going a little tight when Kokichi first presses his fingers down. It stung a bit on his bites, so he tries to ease up, just a bit, keeps staring down at the red, raised skin. “You love that cat. You just complain about it shedding on you because you have a weird relationship with vulnerability.”

Kokichi looks down even harder, because no way can he look at Shuichi like this, with that soft kindness in his voice. “Wow, okay, who made you my therapist?”

“Someone has to be, if you won’t go,” Shuichi says, lightly, fondly. Kokichi frowns. He pauses his movements, just for a moment, then starts up again, carefully dabbing in the cream.

“You know it’s not your responsibility to take care of me, right?” He tries to say it lightly, tries to inject it full of meaning. Tries to pretend it doesn’t make his skin crawl, the idea that Shuichi is here out of some sense of obligation. That their friendship is based off guilt and worry. The cream is mostly rubbed in now, but Kokichi keeps dabbing, just for any excuse not to look up.

Shuichi’s wrist tenses, just for a moment. Kokichi can’t begin to imagine what that means. “Of course I know,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a lie, but then he continues. “I mean… to a certain extent, I do feel responsible to- look out for you and stuff. But that’s because we’re friends. And we live together. And we’ve- we’ve been through so much that it would be stupid if we didn’t, right?” Kokichi doesn’t look up, and Shuichi shifts, crossing his legs, shuffling closer, still holding his hand still. “Like how you look after me. And how you bring the others together and drag me out of my bedroom and check on my wrist.”

Ouma Kokichi has ten friends, and no one else he can trust. Ouma Kokichi does not have ten friends, so he does not have anyone. Ouma Kokichi has people he worries about. People he didn’t want to die, people he still wants to save, to avenge, to apologize too. Ouma Kokichi has someone who worries about him and buys him dinner when he’s meant to cook. 

Ouma Kokichi rolls his eyes, finally dropping Shuichi’s hand and popping the cap on the ointment. “Whatever,” he says. “Think of it as payment for dinner.”

Shuichi sighs, but he doesn’t sound disappointed, and when Kokichi chances a glance up, his eyes are warm. “You bewilder me, Kokichi.” 

“You say that like it’s a good thing.” Is it? His chest feels packed too full.

Another smile, too much, Shuichi reaching over to grab a flaky piece of pastry, popping it on his tongue and letting it melt. “Well, you’re never boring.”

Of course he isn’t. Ouma Kokichi grins, sitting on the floor, and swipes his fingers through the dripping ice cream on his plate while Shuichi splutters about needing to wash off the ointment first. 

\--

_server: my trauma is cooler than your trauma_

**shoeichi:** _@spaceman_ where the fuck are you

**gorgeousgirlgenius:** o fuck its angry saihara watch yourself

**shoeichi:** i’m not angry, i’m disappointed

**magicgirl:** no capitals…. he must be really mad….

**DEGENERACY:** what the Fuck did you do, momota

**ultimateclown:** he got distracted and abandoned shuichi in the middle of a mall in rush hour time and he has both their train passes

**ultimateclown:** to quote my beloved directly, “if i’m late home its because ive had to bury kaito’s body”

**shoeichi:** I DIDN’T SAY THAT I’M NOT MAD 

**ultimateclown:** ill pull out the Receipts ™ bitch 

**gorgeousgirlgenius:** im both scared and aroused

**thanks mom:** Shuichi, don’t kill Kaito!

**shoeichi:** IM NOT GOING TO 

**spaceman:** oh fuck bro im so sorry  
 **spaceman:** i completely forgot omg

**shoeichi:** IVE BEEN TEXTING YOU FOR THE LAST HALF HOUR

**spaceman:** my phone was off!!!  
 **spaceman:** ok hold on im coming back

**shoeichi:** ...alright that’s fine  
 **shoeichi:** Sorry for messaging the group. Where are you?

**spaceman:** ……… im coming back

**thanks mom:** wh

**thanks mom:** Kaito where are you

**spaceman:** ……..HALFWAY HOME I GOT ON A TRAIN  
 **spaceman:** I FORGOT IM SORRY

**shoeichi:** YOU HAVE MY TRAIN PASS!!!!

**spaceman:** IM SORRY

**gorgeousgirlgenius: hholy shit**

**ultimateclown:** sigh i guess i’ll cook dinner AGAIN tonight

**spaceman:** NO IM SORRY I’LL GET YOU GUYS SOMETHING I’M SO SORRY

**shoeichi:** ...Kaito it’s fine

**spaceman:** I’M SO SORRY

**makiroll:** Kaito.

**spaceman:** AAAAAHHHHHH

**ultimateclown:** new text from shuichi: “I’m still mad but I feel bad for making him worry. I’m so tired.”

**shoeichi:** KOKICHI CAN YOU PLEASE KEEP OUR TEXTS PRIVATE

**gorgeousgirlgenius:** owO why do you want them private

**spaceman:** BRO IM SO SORRY

**shoeichi:** ITS FINE ITS OK IM NOT MAD

**ultimateclown:** (hes mad)

**spaceman:** I’LL DO ALL YOUR GROCERIES FOR THE NEXT WEEK

**makiroll:** dear god.

**thanks mom:** This is such a disaster. I can’t believe we’re allowed to live on our own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope the kokichi and gonta scene was ok! i know a lot of people have strong feelings abt that trial. i worry that it might come across like everyone is too soft on kokichi, but on miu's side, she tried to kill him first so imagine she's only as mad at him as she is with herself, and they've just got a very complicated friendship and.... im rambling lol. but gonta is such a nice person, i genuinely dont think he would be angry about it, especially if he watched the rest of the show. gonta is far too nice. but i know people feel really strongly about it and aughghhh. i dont mean to completely erase ouma's bad actions, but like... gonta is not a character made for holding grudges lol. and miu and him have such a weird relationship that their grudges manifest in an equally weird way. 
> 
> im also sorry tsumugi's appearance was so brief! we'll see more of her soon, i promise.
> 
> healing! kindness! roommate bullshit!! indulgence! hooray!
> 
> i hope you're all enjoying it! :)


	9. as a result of being by you,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are you thinking about?” Shuichi asks, and his voice has dipped so quiet, like he’s afraid to disturb the music, like he cares about its feelings. He cares about everything, so much, that Shuichi. 
> 
> Kokichi laughs, finally, but even that comes out muted, tucked under cotton sheets and set out in the summer night to melt. “Um…. Everything,” he decides. 
> 
> “Everything?” Shuichi echoes, moving back.
> 
> “Yeah. The game, and being out, and dying, and being alive.”
> 
> “That’s a lot for one person."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi its me with very very indulgent chapter! augh im becoming predictable its all 'roommates roommates coffee dancing'. no i am not sorry.  
> all fluff no cereal here. we've had a real good streak lately, right? no fights or anything. wow! i'm so proud of all the healing that everyone's doing :) 
> 
> I do have some warnings here for underage drinking, which! I do not condone! But it takes place in the flashback scene at the end (which also features the mention of drug use) and in the second scene, from “Shuichi comes home the evening after a particularly rough session…” to the end of it, really. Sorry about that!  
> The last scene/flashback also contains a lot of.... morbid thinking about death and Danganronpa. but in a gay way! so.
> 
> OH ALSO: i dont work out. i dont know how you work out. i did, however, take ballet for twelve years so this is what that's based off. im sorry, im goth i dont go to the gym. (all my hairspray would sweat off)

Shuichi goes to the gym three times a week, plus a fourth time on Saturdays to play baseball with everyone. But Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays… those are for the training gang, which can consists of anyone from Himiko to Chabashira to Kaede, but always, without fail has Maki and Kaito, who are the only ones who come regularly. 

It looks like it’s just them today, as Shuichi drops his bag and gives them a wave, a little apologetic to interrupt the fond banter it looks like they’re having, Kaito rubbing the back of his neck as Maki crosses her arms and not-quite-smiles at him. They really should just move in together at this point- everyone knows Maki spends all her time at Kaito’s place (including the tabloids, which have proved to be nothing but incredibly annoying about it), and that the two of them are trying to keep things slow and steady. He’s talked to Kaito about it before, about how much he doesn’t want to ruin their friendship, about how the idea of making Maki feel unable to speak to him is unbearable, and Shuichi gets it. He really, really does.  
(Kaito calls Shuichi a genius all the time, but he’s not the one who decided to move in with his crush/rival/friend. One of them picked up baking to try and fatten up said tiny, stick-thin crush, and it’s not Kaito.)

Shuichi, already changed and with his bag stashed away, jogs over to them. “Hey. Am I late?”

“Right on time, sidekick!” Kaito says cheerfully, clapping a hand on his shoulder. They get a few glances, as always, but they specifically chose this gym because of its strict rules around harassment, and after a few weeks, all the regulars had grown used to having the Danganronpa stars/failures lurking around. Still, they do look. Can’t stop them looking. “We haven’t even started stretching yet.”

Maki stares at Shuichi for a moment, then unfolds his arm. “You’re looking in good shape, Shuichi,” she says. “You’ll need to eat more if you want to actually gain muscle.”

“Oh- I don’t- I mean, I’m not really in this to get buff, or anything,” Shuichi admits sheepishly, dropping down onto a mat at the same time Kaito does, Maki following. “Just feeling a bit stronger would be good. You know, more secure in myself.” He wouldn’t complain about getting more muscle, but he doesn’t know if he has the time to dedicate to it. And he’s not really interested in eating as many eggs as Maki does.

Kaito, who goes to the gym five times a week with Maki, and who has only slightly less impressive biceps, nudges his arm as they all extend a leg and lean over it, flexing their toes. “But don’t you want to impress all the babes?”

Shuichi splutters, and Maki exhales laugher from her nose, her movements almost elegant as she pulses her leg. “I think Shuichi has a little too much on his plate at the moment for something as inane as that.”

“Oh yeah, how’s Akamatsu?” Kaito asks, just as excitedly. “Are you two still doing the interview stuff together?”

“Okay, yes, but I’m not dating her,” Shuichi says, firmly, switching legs as the others do, one fluid group movement. “I’m not interested in Kaede like that, really.”

“He’s not her type, anyway,” Maki adds, pushing her arms above her head and flexing

Kaito looks a little disappointed, as they all stand up and do a few more arm stretches, sinking into squats as they do. “Dude. Your life is all work, eat, don’t sleep, Ouma. You need to branch out more!”

“I sleep,” Shuichi protests. “And I’m here with you guys! I do lots of things! I’m taking a barista course!”

“You’re taking more work to make Ouma happy,” Maki says. Her voice grows a little colder when she says his name, like it’s distasteful. Shuichi winces.

On the other hand, Kaito pats his shoulder again. “Dude, not that it isn’t really cool of you to look after him and stuff- god knows he needs someone to be nice to him- but you really gotta do some more fun stuff.” Ever since the simulation, Kaito had really… mellowed. He was still the same Kaito, the same energy and passion, but he’d learned to be a little more gentle. 

Shuichi shifts his eyes away, sighing, but it’s fond. “This is fun. I like school, and I… okay, the work sucks, but I’m not doing so much, now. It’s mostly just school, really. And I like coffee.”

“You have to like coffee,” Maki says, straightening up and dropping her arms. “You practically live off the stuff. Shall we get started?”

They do their usual sets, taking turns spotting each other. Shuichi’s recently moved up a set of weights, so he has to really push himself in short bursts, but it honestly feels far better than a longer workout with a smaller set- which he does, anyway, because endurance is important. They all jog on treadmills and Kaito and Shuichi chat, and then Maki scolds them when they inevitably get out of breath. Then they go swimming in the pools, because they have an extremely cost-efficient premium membership (well, Maki has a membership, that gets her two guests and that they all pay for.) And after it all, when Shuichi feels exhausted, his muscles either raw or sore, his body seeping out of his skin, they head into the spa room, which is modeled after an onsen but requires swimwear. 

Kaito moans as he melts into the hot water, and Shuichi laughs, leaning back into the steam and closing his eyes. “I think I broke something,” he groans.

“Idiot,” Maki says. “What do you think the stretches are for?”

“You always think you broke something,” Shuichi says, as he always does, and Kaito just grins lazily.

Maki adjusts the straps of her swimsuit, then lets her arms float to the sides. She’s more relaxed than ever like this, tired and warm and- pleased to be with them. “Shuichi,” she says, and her voice, too, is warm with the spa. “What have you been up to?”

“Ah, uh, just the usual,” he says, stretching out his legs, letting the water ease the burn in his thighs. “I’m really enjoying my art history course. And criminal psychology, but that’s kind of a given, I guess.” He laughs, awkwardly, and Maki reaches over to slap him, any potential sting soothed by the heat.

“Don’t be so down on yourself,” she orders. “You owe your hard work and your brains to no one but yourself.”

“Ha, I guess.” Shuichi thinks back, briefly, to the letter from his past self, a different person entirely. He must have been clever, too. But still so stupid.

Kaito crosses his arms behind his head and sinks down even lower, like he’s trying to become part of the water. “How’s Ouma?” He’s always a little worried about Kokichi. Shuichi thinks that he feels responsible both for his death and for the failure of his plan.  
That makes two of them.

“He’s…” Shuichi considers the question. Good as he can be? Good as any of them? “I’m proud of him,” he sets on. “He’s started therapy, and it’s- well, it’s a slow process, but he’s still going.”

“It’s about time,” Maki grumbles. She, on the other hand, has no pity for Kokichi, but she manages to hold back most of her bitterness. Her view on him definitely improved since he apologized to Kaito. 

Kaito makes a ‘whoop’ and claps his hands, and Shuichi thanks every god he knows that the spa is empty today. The astronaut floats away from the seat in the spa, paddling his hands in the water like a turtle, grinning all the while. “Okay, but how are he and you? Are you fighting?”

“N-not really?” Shuichi has to think about the question. “I mean, sometimes things get… weird. And we have little arguments pretty frequently about dumb stuff, but we don’t- I mean, even when we have fought, we do it weird. It’s weird. B-but good!” He adds in quickly, when Maki’s eyes narrow. “I mean, the little arguments- they’re resolved quickly, and for the most part, everything is… really good. Really.”

Really, really. Kokichi is fun. He’s entertaining, and distracting at all the right times, and surprisingly helpful. He’ll annotate Shuichi’s homework, his notes for speeches, help compose emails to the VRF. He cooks when it’s his turn, and he cleans up after himself, as long as Shuichi has the patience to leave his craft projects be. They watch television together and make fun of it or argue about the themes, and they have genuinely insightful conversation over meals. They don’t talk about Danganronpa too much, but when they do, it’s productive, not just… miserable. It’s all the reasons Shuichi suggested they move in together. Spending time with Kokichi is always interesting, never draining, and it… it eases the guilt, a little, being able to know he’s okay and he’s close. If Kokichi is alive, the others must be, too. If Kokichi is alive, Shuichi can still make it up to him. 

Kaito looks at him curiously. “You two are in the news a lot, lately.”

That’s news to Shuichi. He blinks. “We are?”

“Yeah. Apparently the internet can’t accept that you’re friends, or something.” Kaito chuckles, sinks down into the water.

Maki looks over, frowning. “You haven’t noticed? I thought you kept up with that sort of thing.”

“O-only what Danganronpa puts out,” he stammers. “I don’t put much stock into the gossip stuff unless someone brings it to me.”

“You’re in it all the time,” Kaito says. “You and your big Legal Project, or you and Akamatsu, or you and us, or you and Yumeno, or you and Ouma.”

 _Yeah,_ Shuichi thinks, staring over his shoulder at the rest of the spa. _That’s why I don’t read them._

Maki, as if she had just caught herself slumping, sits up a little straighter, giving Shuichi an unreadable gaze. “You’re being careful, aren’t you?”

“What?”

She keeps staring, steadily. “There’s a lot of people who really don’t like you, Shuichi. Even more who are obsessed with you, and not in a good way.” She glances sideways, taking in a breath. “I know how important it is to live normal lives, I do. I just… I don’t want any of us to become complacent.”

“Maki,” Shuichi says gently, reaching over to touch her arm. He does it lightly, barely there, waiting for her to push him away. “We’re being careful. The Foundation still checks up on us, and we’ve got the chat- we always know where people are going, right? And we’ve all got extra security.”

“I know,” she says, still looking away. She’s quiet for a moment. “We all listen to your interviews, you know. All of them.” Shuichi doesn’t have the chance to awkwardly thank her before she lets out a shaky breath. “I keep thinking about the past contestants who have… awful stuff happen to them by the fans.”

Shuichi squeezes her arm, as Kaito floats back over to sit on her other side again. “Those cases mostly happened to the contestants who… lost, I guess. The ones who didn’t win the prize money and couldn’t afford security, and often didn’t have people to go home too. We are… we’re so, so lucky, Maki. We’ve got resources, and outside support-”

“And more importantly, we have each other,” Kaito cuts in, his smile bright and encouraging as it is soft. “No other contestants have stuck together like we have.”

Maki bites her lip, looks away again. “Well, it’s not my fault you all make me worry about you all the time.”

Kaito grins. “I really love it when you open up,” he says, too earnest to be flirtatious, and Shuichi immediately wants to bury his head in the sand. 

She stares up at him, then turns her head away, cheeks barely tinged with pink. “Don’t get used to it,” she says, but the words have no barbs.

Shuichi heads home a while later, hugging them both goodbye, and as always, he feels far better than he had when he went in. Once he’s home, he falls onto the couch with a sigh and picks up his phone. He’s not sure why, but he opens up an incognito tab and types in his own name, and then, after a pause, Kokichi’s.

 _Saihara and Ouma seen getting lunch together._ _  
_ _Saihara and Ouma challenge the definition of protag/antag relationships._ _  
_ _‘In Bad Taste’, some Danganronpa fans say, about the unlikely friendship between two men who ended their beloved show._ _  
_ _Are the ultimate detective and supreme leader really living together? Photos from the Shibuya station would imply so!_ _  
_ _Is this a win for saiouma shippers? Saihara mentions Ouma Kokichi in his latest interview._ _  
_ _Saihara and Ouma- plotting something?_

“Wow, what did that phone do to you?”

It takes Shuichi a lot of willpower to not yelp and throw it away, instead hastily closing the tab and shoving it in his pocket. Ouma Kokichi, roommate indeed, stands in front of him, hands on his hips. “Just- reading some dumb articles,” he says, not lying.

Kokichi narrows his eyes for a moment, then shrugs, running a hand through his hair. He must have showered recently, because it’s soft and fluffy, like he hasn’t had the chance to twist his fingers in too much. “You should probably not do that.”

“Yeah- You’re home early,” Shuichi stammers, because to his knowledge, Kokichi was supposed to be out with Iruma today.

“I got bored,” Kokichi says, which is probably a lie, but it doesn’t matter with the way he grins. “And where were _you?”_

“Ah- I was just at the gym.”

Kokichi flops down next to him and makes a show of staring at his arms, pushing up the sleeves of Shuichi’s shirt. “Wow, and look at that! I think I’m seeing some muscle!”

Shuichi shoves him away when Kokichi starts palming his arm like it’s a slab of meat, laughing even as heat creeps up his neck. “Come on, Kokichi, don’t do that.” He’s not showing any muscle, even with all his hard work- really, he’s just stopped looking like a bunch of twigs strapped together. But it’s hard not to feel self conscious with Kokichi’s hands on him, Kokichi pretending to swoon.

Kokichi is just teasing, because even if Kokichi was actually interested in Shuichi, he’d never show it. Kokichi hates showing intimacy, has to disguise all his affectionate actions under a layer of jokes and insults (which Shuichi, unfortunately, has grown to find even more endearing) and he would never admit to something like genuine attraction. Which is why Shuichi’s stomach twinges when Kokichi throws his arms around his shoulders, sinking against him on the couch. “Come on, Shumai!” He coos. “Pick me up and spin me, like Gonta!”

Shuichi splutters, both at the sudden intimacy and at the implication. “I- I don’t think I’m ever going to be as strong as Gonta,” he stammers. “I don’t know if I can even pick you up, actually, I’m still really stringy-”

“Are you calling me fat?” Kokichi asks, pouting, his eyes growing wet as he stares at Shuichi, arms still around his shoulders. “Do you think I’m h-heavy, Shuichi?”

“Oh my god, no.” Shuichi knows he’s joking, but here’s the thing: Kokichi has gained some weight recently. In terms of ‘this severely underweight, possible growth-stunted teen has begun eating three meals a day and actually has some color in his cheeks now’. Kokichi has a slight frame, but now he actually has a bit of a tummy, flesh on his arms, his thighs touching when he slumps in his chair in his boxers because he’s ‘too hot’. (Shuichi will never admit to noticing these things. He’s a detective. It’s not perverted, he swears.) And now he’s getting flustered, and- the point is, that even if it’s a joke, he doesn’t want to do anything to risk Kokichi’s eating habits dying back. “I- I guess I can give it a go? You’re pretty small.”

“Hooray!” Kokichi jumps away from him, and Shuichi only has a moment to miss the heat of his arms around his neck, before he’s rocking up on his tip toes and making grabby hands. “Pick me up, pick me up!”

“Do you want… a piggyback or something?” Kokichi just grins, eyes twinkling and Shuichi sighs and resigns himself to not sleeping tonight as he stands up. He takes a moment, prays to Maki and god and every strong person he knows, and then he scoops one hand under Kokichi’s knees, puts the other on his upper back, tenses his legs like Maki’s taught him, and lifts him up.

It’s not… too hard, actually, even if his tired arms protest, and Shuichi has a moment of triumph that’s _wayyyyy_ better than moving up weights when he lifts Kokichi to his chest and finds he can hold him there fairly easily. Still, he has to take a moment to adjust the hold gently, trying to make sure Kokichi’s held steady while also not cramping his wrists, and he mumbles to himself as he does. “Wow, you really are light.”

Kokichi makes an odd noise, and Shuichi quickly looks away from his own hands and at the supreme leader. His face is frozen up the way it gets when he’s taken off guard, and Shuichi’s about to ask him if he’s alright, when he looks away and crosses his arms. “Huh. I didn’t expect you to actually be able to do it.”

“You need to eat more,” Shuichi says, smiling despite himself. “Oh- should I put you down?”

Kokichi glances back, and stares for a moment, like something about Shuichi’s face has grabbed his interest. His eyes are dark and soft and velvety. Shuichi notes, in their living room with the sun streaming behind him, that Kokichi’s skin isn’t as milk-white as it was previously. His freckles are more obvious now, peppered over his face, not just his cheeks but on his nose as well, a few tiny dots on his forehead. But under his eyes, they are dark and bronze and pretty, pressed up against smudged eyeliner and a few stars drawn on in blue. 

Shuichi’s heart goes _thump._

“No,” Kokichi finally says, and it’s embarrassing how relieved it makes him. “I want you to carry me to the kitchen.”

Carrying is slightly more difficult than just holding, but Shuichi manages, even if his arms are beginning to cramp by the time they make the few meters to the kitchen. He sets Kokichi down on the counter, because Kokichi doesn’t sit on chairs like a normal person, and then is ordered to pull out one of their tubs of iceblocks, and they both take one (strawberry for Kokichi, mango for Shuichi) and eat them there in the kitchen, the sun all yellow and the atmosphere soft.

Kokichi points his iceblock at Shuichi, pink dripping down his hand, and Shuichi has a sudden, intense, and very humiliating urge to grab Kokichi’s hand and kiss it off. “You know, I might get you to carry me everywhere from now on. It’s only fitting, for a supreme leader.”

Shuichi rolls his eyes, fondly, and bites off a chunk of soft, frozen fruit. “Will you pay me for my time?”

“Gasp!” Kokichi presses a hand to his chest, feigns insult. “You wound me, Shuichi. As my beloved servant, you really should be pleased to help me like this.”

Beloved. Shuichi thinks of all the articles about them, people angry about their friendship, confused by it, excited. He can’t help but smile, ducking his head. “Whatever you need, supreme leader.”

\--

Well, therapy fucking sucks. It sucks so bad. Kokichi has been going for a little over two months now and he hates it.  
He’s changed therapists several times because they are either too assertive and make him uncomfortable, or too passive and never ask the right questions or treat him seriously. He’s almost quit several times, but Shuichi always convinces him to just switch and find someone else.  
(Shuichi, kneeling down and quiet, has talked about his own struggles with therapy, about how so many therapists really don’t get it, seem there just to study them. He’s also talked about how finding the one that worked for him was the most relieving thing he’d ever done.)

So, Kokichi keeps trying. He gets a few somewhat-useful things out of them, vent time and a few coping mechanisms. But he’s a liar to the core, and the more uncomfortable he gets, the more he lies, and the more they push him, the more he lies, and the more frustrated and angry he gets that they’re not doing _anything._  
It’s not like he expects instant results. But _something._

His latest therapist is… pretty ok. As good as he can expect, really- good at pushing when he needs a push, letting him run his mouth when he needs to. Unlike the others, he asked Kokichi for a plan before he’d even started spilling his guts. He makes Kokichi mad, and then apologizes, and… asserts that he’s actually got every right to feel the way he does. He never makes him feel like he’s overreacting. He doesn’t talk about inane bullshit. He’s okay, looking at the lies and figuring out which ones to take seriously. Kokichi’s been going biweekly for the past few weeks, and it’s… okay. It’s okay.

It still sucks, though.

Shuichi comes home the evening after a particularly rough session to find Kokichi lying on their living room floor, mixing energy drinks and vodka and then slamming them, propping himself up on pillows to drink and then flopping back into them. Some dumb bullshit comedy plays on the tv that he’s not paying attention to, and his colored lights hum as they shift from green to yellow to red to purple. 

“Rough day?” He asks, dropping his bag and his coat by the door and walking over to sit next to him. 

Kokichi groans and flops sideways on the floor. “I hate therapy,” he moans. “I hate you for making me go.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Shuichi murmurs, and his voice is- ugh, too much. Kokichi sits up and grabs for the vodka, only for Shuichi to lift it up above him. “How much have you had?”

“Like two shots, god, come on, I’m not even drunk.”

Shuichi pulls a face and stands up, and Kokichi feels a sharp stab of hatred. “You’ll knock yourself out with this.”

“It’s only 12%, you big coward,” Kokichi grumbles, pulling himself to his feet. Ugh. He’s not drunk, but the world sways just a bit with the sudden change in direction. “Come on, Shumai, I had a really- I’ve been stuck in my thoughts all day. This is the first time I’ve ever even bought alcohol, come on.”

“Where did you even get this?” Shuichi asks, turning the bottle over.

He paid a man outside a liquor store three times the price for it. Kokichi decides to change tactics, pulling on his sweetest, most innocent expression, letting tears bead in his eyes. “Come on, Shumai, I just want a little more. You can keep an eye on me and stuff, right?”

Shuichi, clearly torn, glances between Kokichi and the bottle. Eventually, he sighs, and bends over to pick up the cans of monster lying around, too, and carries them over to the kitchen counter. Kokichi hovers behind him hopelessly. 

“Well,” the detective says. “It’s a bit sad to drink alone. Let me pull together a meal and we can drink it together.”

The alcohol isn’t too strong, even for vodka, and there’s two of them, and Shuichi makes a joke about being an alcoholic who can’t even remember because he does a spectacular job not puking. Kokichi, on the other hand, who, despite being smaller than Shuichi, drinks a lot faster, has to make a dash for the bathroom at one point- a tremendous, swaying run that has him crashing into the walls as he skids into the bathroom, narrowly missing the floor. Shuichi follows after him, laughing, and rubs his back, and helps clean him up, and Kokichi laughs too because he was too drunk to even feel sick.  
They don’t quite finish the bottle, and Shuichi insists they drink water as well, and they eat food- and still, they end up drunker than either of them intended. Sure, Kokichi wanted to drink until he passed out, until his mind stopped working, but he’d never really gotten this- _blitzed_ before, didn’t quite realize how the world was going to shift around him when he sat back at the table and stared at the lights flashing on their wall, and realized everything was swinging.

“Hey, hey.” He’s way too drunk. Kokichi stands up, sways a few steps backward, holds out his hands.

Shuichi follows, suspended on a string, stumbles after him. The colored lights flicker from blue to violet, beating slowly. “W-what?” Shuichi laughs, standing too close. Too close. 

Kokichi reaches out, takes his hands, grabs them tight. After a moment of just laughing, he threads their fingers together- or, maybe, or Shuichi does, but their fingers interlace and they sway down, almost falling over each other. “Dance with me,” he slurs.

“We don’t have any music.” Shuichi, the realist. Shuichi, the hero. Shuichi who makes him coffee. Shuichi who won him revenge through the glaze of a tv screen, Shuichi who bandaged his wounds in the school bathrooms. 

Kokichi rolls his eyes, dripping through his own skin. “We don’t need it.”

“Hold on.” Shuichi pulls away, anyway, and Kokichi laughs because Shuichi’s never on the same page as him, because they never put things together, because Shuichi would never dance with him. He knows that, knows it so much that the first swell of sound almost startles him, even with how soft it is.  
And then Shuichi is linking their hands again, and he pulls himself up to Kokichi, or Kokichi to him, and he’s smiling. “‘Figured we should do it properly,” he murmurs, and his eyes are swollen with liquor, dark as the night, as their room. Red light flickers over his face. 

Kokichi laughs again. It’s so stupid and meaningless and everything, and he sways with the sound, three-step melody falling and rocking into itself. They’re holding hands in their living room and the lights are low and they have music, and they’re barely dancing, just swaying in the same direction, but Shuichi is looking at him like- like he’s good, like he’s never been happier to be anywhere than drunk and with Kokichi at three am in their shitty downtown flat. 

One of them moves, finally, and the other stumbles after, and they’re holding hands. They trip over each other, but it’s too slow to hurt, and Kokichi’s too drunk to notice a hooked ankle, to stop moving when it feels like his whole body is being pulled around. He can’t look away, can’t do anything but move and hum to the song.  
It’s not his song, not with its humming, urgent beat, and the sing-song lyrics, sweet and sad and broken. This one has lyrics, but he can barely hear them, distant under the slightly autotuned strings, but they feel sad, too. Shuichi’s kind of the sort of person who only listens to songs that are a bit sad, Kokichi thinks, looking at the bags under his eyes. They’re pretty. He thinks about his own song, you and me, you and me, you and me, and he thinks about Shuichi and him. 

Kokichi’s brain keeps flickering back to their linked hands, the way they’re held up high like they’re holding each other hostage. Shuichi, ever perceptive, drunk and soft-eyed and sleepy, must notice something, because the music swells up and he sways sideways and pulls one hand out, Kokichi’s going with it, and the other slips away and moves to his hip. 

Kokichi mimics the gesture, his own hand slipping around to rest on Shuichi’s shoulderblades, hooked on there just gently, barely there but present, hanging on. 

Shuichi’s eyes never move from his face. He knows, because he never looks away, either. 

Their feet, sideways, back, sideways again, forward, no discernable pattern- slow, overlapping each other, clumsy and stupid and laughable, but it all feels so- so serious, so heavy, with the music pressing in on them on either side. 

“What are you thinking about?” Shuichi asks, and his voice has dipped so quiet, like he’s afraid to disturb the music, like he cares about its feelings. He cares about everything, so much, that Shuichi. 

Kokichi laughs, finally, but even that comes out muted, tucked under cotton sheets and set out in the summer night to melt. “Um…. Everything,” he decides. 

“Everything?” Shuichi echoes, moving back.

“Yeah. The game, and being out, and dying, and being alive.”

“That’s a lot for one person,” Shuichi says, and Kokichi nods, and they move sideways, Kokichi tucking one foot behind the other. The music is like water, dripping over itself. “Tell me about something you were thinking about today.” The curve of a smile. “Before you got drunk.”

Kokichi tilts his head to the side, tips it up, stares at the way the ceiling changes color with the lights. “Today, I was watering the plants,” he says, and he’s not sure where he’s going with it, but he knows he’ll get there. “They all need watered on different days, and you always forget.”

“I do,” Shuichi says.

“Right,” Kokichi says. “And I don’t water many on Wednesdays, just the really needy ones. They need water three times a week, and I have to give them extra, ‘cos we’re coming into summer. So I go about, and I’m watering all the needy plants, the ones with blossoms and stuff, and I’m thinking about if the blueberry bushes will give us anything, when I go outside to water them. Blueberry bushes,” he explains, lifting his fingers for a moment, flexing them, and then sinking back into it, and they dance. “They prefer to be next to each other, of different varieties. It’s good for them. So I have two bushes out there, one that’s really big and one that’s a bit smaller, with darker leaves. And I water them at the same time, but I always think it’s funny how they need the same amount of water, even though one’s smaller. And it’s not making any berries, either. So I gave it a bit less water, today, just to see it would change anything. But I kept thinking about it, all day.”  
They turn in a slow circle, moving over the carpet, and the singer’s voice grows lower and more melancholy. “And I ended up going out, because I was going off to therapy, and then I go back inside and get my watering can, and I fill it up just a bit, and I water the smaller one again, and I didn’t think of it anymore. I just thought it was funny, when I was out there, that I felt I was helping the big one, too. Since they need each other. Blueberries like company. Therefore…” He doesn’t finish the theory, because Shuichi’s thumb brushes over his knuckles.

“Therefore?” Shuichi whispers.

“Therefore…” Kokichi murmurs back, his own voice trapped behind his teeth. “Therefore, you and me.”

“You and me, you and me,” Shuichi echoes, and Kokichi’s laughter feels like it comes out in bubbles.

“Exactly. Lovey-dovey!” Shuichi moves forward a little suddenly, as the music dips, and Kokichi tries to move sideways, and they end up far closer than before, chests pressed together. They freeze like that for a moment, as the music rises in volume and intensity, ringing out around them, before it sinks back down, and they step with it, and they don’t move apart.  
Shuichi’s arm is wrapped right around his waist, his hand resting on the opposite hip from where it started. Kokichi isn’t much better, his arm angled up, pressed to Shuichi’s back with his hand between his shoulderblades. He curls his fingers in and imagines he can feel wings there. They are so, so close, swaying with each other, and Shuichi is holding him so gently but so tight, and his own hand feels so hot and so heavy. 

“I’m not going to remember this,” Shuichi admits after a moment, his voice smiling, golden, curling around the fringes of Kokichi’s psyche. 

“Neither am I.” He closes his eyes as the chorus of the song hits again, moves his head with it. “Makes it kind of private, huh?”

“Yeah.” He can imagine Shuichi’s smile as his hand presses against Kokichi’s hip, as he moves, dips down a little lower, as their dancing slows even more and their feet shuffle closer. They’re just hugging, really, inching around their room to music with their left hands linked and their arms twisted around tight. They are so close it hurts. 

Kokichi opens his eyes, and the whole room swells and fades back, all the colors at once and then all gone, dim and soft and dark. “Shuichi.”

“Kokichi.” Shuichi’s smile is even better than he imagines. It always is. 

His face is just… beautiful. Shuichi makes a good hero, even if he isn’t always as headstrong as Akamatsu or Momota. He has eyes like pieces of amber, trapping you there, such a neat, pretty jaw, hair swooping over his forehead in soft, lovely bangs. He’s your fairytale prince, your boy from the peach, your worst temptation. Kokichi thinks he’s loved him longer than he remembers.  
He can’t stop staring. “I don’t know. Why I want to dance with you.” 

Shuichi’s eyes crinkle, and if Kokichi were more sober, he’d think it was unfair, the way they pull at his stomach. But right now, he just sways with it, a tide being pulled by the moon. “I just want to be by you.” His voice is lower than usual, softer, too, like his eyelashes- low on his eyes but so pretty. Maybe it’s because he’s looking down. 

“Yeah.” Kokichi wants to be by him, always. “Hey.”

Their conversations come out so slow and tilted, like their shuffle of a dance. “Hey,” Shuichi says, indulgent, every imagined ally. 

“I think I like you, Saihara Shuichi.” It’s so scary. Too scary to see, even now, even when the way that Shuichi stares at him, holds him, can’t mean anything else. The smile that blooms across Kokichi’s face is half adrenaline, half stupid, reckless, happiness. 

“Ouma Kokichi,” Shuichi says, breathless, and it all gets better and worse at once. Kokichi’s stomach is so hollow, his chest so full. “I think I like you, too.”

Kokichi doesn’t even blink, just smiles even more, and Shuichi smiles back, and they sway together on a rise of sound, stepping forward together, and back, and sideways, and Kokichi tries to press closer but he’s already close enough, and the vocalist is singing like his heart is breaking right there, but Kokichi can’t stop smiling. 

“Okay,” he says, after a moment, and Shuichi squeezes his hand, the one still linked with his. 

They keep dancing for what feels like forever. Time melts away.

They don’t remember it, the next day.

\--

Shuichi and Kokichi support each other. After that one disastrous night of drinking where they wake up on the floor, Kokichi doesn’t seem quite as eager to go and poison his brain, and Shuichi isn’t, either. But on the days when Kokichi has therapy, Shuichi knows to come home with popcorn and cheap soft drinks, to throw something truly cheesy and brainless onto the television and sit with him. And Kokichi, observational, clever Kokichi, starts doing the same when he figures out what days Shuichi has therapy, only with bad slasher films and iced tea. 

It’s on one of these nights that Shuichi comes home, looks at Kokichi all set up with treats specifically for him, to cheer him up, and his heart falls.

“I’ve- I’ve got to do some work this evening,” he says, and Kokichi’s cheerful grin doesn’t even flinch, but it still feels wrong. “I’ll do it out here, and we can still watch and stuff, but I… I’ll need my laptop. I’m sorry.”

Kokichi grins a moment longer, then looks away, examining his nails. “Hey, your loss, Saihara. Go on, burn yourself out.”

He still feels guilty, when he pulls out his laptop and goes to sit on his usual spot on the couch (the corner, so Kokichi can squirm and kick over the rest of it) but Kokichi hops up onto the couch and crosses his legs. 

“Don’t look so glum,” the supreme leader says, switching on a movie. “Seriously, I’m not going to kill myself because you had to bring down an evil corporation on movie night. On one of our _two_ movie nights a week. Lift that chin, detective.”

So Shuichi smiles at him, and Kokichi smiles back, and they settle down for the evening. He types away, Kokichi occasionally cutting in with an incredibly insightful comment, peering over his shoulder and making fun of his language. Sometimes, when he could’ve sworn that Kokichi was staring at the television with complete focus, he’ll casually point out a spelling error, something Shuichi hadn’t even seen. It’s… honestly kind of nice. He drinks through all the iced tea, and they eat the popcorn, and Kokichi sets up a second movie when the first ends.  
About half way through the third movie, the air outside nothing but night, Kokichi stifles a yawn.

Shuichi turns to him, guilt cutting through his stomach. “Hey, you don’t have to stay up for me. I’ll... “ He glances back at the drive on his laptop, full of folders that need filled. He winces. “I’ll probably be a while. You can go to bed if you’re tired.”

Kokichi sniffs, adjusting his feet. “If I’m tired, I’ll go to sleep when I like,” he says, no room for argument.  
And Shuichi is so tired, and has so much work, and he just… stays on the couch and keeps typing away. Kokichi doesn’t leave, he sits next to him and watches his movie with volume low so Shuichi can try and focus. He gets up, and comes back with two cups of tea, and Shuichi thanks him and sets his laptop aside for a few minutes to drink it, watching the movie with him. And he keeps watching, even when he’s drained the cup, just holding it in both hands and staring at the tv, his eyes feeling so heavy and itchy and tired.  
And Kokichi slumps sideways after a while, just tucking his legs up to his side, shuffling a little closer. And Shuichi leans into it, presses their sides up against each other. And slowly, still watching the movie, Kokichi’s head drops onto his shoulder, and Shuichi can feel his breath warm on his neck. Neither of them speak as Shuichi drops his mug somewhere into the side of the couch and shuffles a little to lean sideways, giving Kokichi a little more room.  
And they don’t speak, and they don’t speak, still watching people fight and make up and kiss on their tiny television, as Shuichi sinks sideways and Kokichi sinks with him, until they’re laying sideways, completely horizontal, and Kokichi is laying over Shuichi’s stomach, head still tucked into his neck, and Shuichi has an arm around his waist, and it’s hot and sticky. He can hear crickets outside their sliding doors, chirping around the pot plants on their balcony, and he thinks _we should probably close those,_ but getting up would disturb Kokichi, and he’s so tired, and the warmth isn’t so unpleasant here, Kokichi’s cheek pressed into his neck, there and warm and alive, Shuichi’s pulse pressed against him. 

He’s not sure who falls asleep first- they’re both so quiet, and breathing so steadily, and he can’t see Kokichi’s face without moving his head, but Shuichi knows that- that there is nobody else he would rather fall asleep with like this. He thinks of Kaede, and he loves her, and he loves going to sleep curled up and drooling on each other, and he thinks of Kaito who kicks in his sleep in a way that is both endearing and annoying, and he thinks of Maki who is still and silent and keeps an arm around him if they collapse together, and Himiko who curls up small and likes to be held. 

And he thinks of Kokichi, all the fragile vulnerabilities he does his best to hide, how hesitant he is to show kindness, or intimacy, and how he does anyway, how he is so, so brave, brave enough to go to therapy because his friends insisted, brave enough to show vulnerability with the people he cares about, brave enough to fall asleep in front of Shuichi, to keep close to him. How Kokichi’s soft breath on his neck means more than any other interaction he’s had recently- How everything Kokichi does just draws him in, feels like a victory and coming home all at once, how he never gets sick of playing chess no matter how many times they draw. How Kokichi is the person he’s glad to come home to, how fucking scary and big his feelings are, how young they are, how they’ve been through so much and how he wants so much more, wants to keep this forever and it _terrifies_ him.  
It’s been, what, ten months since they got out of the simulation? It feels like it was just yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. They’ve been living together for three months, now. Shuichi knows that teenage relationships barely ever work out, especially not when they’re paired with trauma and panic, and there are so many things to worry about- there’s no guarantee they’ll all be friends in a year, let alone… if they added more feelings into that mix.  
But he trusts his friends. He trusts that they’ll be able to keep together. They’ve been through enough. And he trusts Kokichi. If, years from now, they never talk, Shuichi will be hurt beyond words, but he wants this now. He wants to hold Kokichi while he falls asleep and make him feel safe, and if Kokichi feels safe with him, then… then that’s it. 

Shuichi’s not sure who falls asleep first, but he hopes it’s Kokichi, because he can’t help dropping a kiss into the soft hair under his chin before he drifts off. 

And the next night, they fall together on the couch again, this time Kokichi lifting up Shuichi’s arm and wriggling under, and they don’t talk about it. And they don’t talk about it. And they don’t talk about how they end up dragging their blankets out, and they tell their friends that it’s because Shuichi’s in the middle of a project and is just sleeping at his workstation, and neither of them can address the elephant in the room. They never move to their bedrooms- the neutral space in the lounge feels safer, a layer of safety, potential denial. 

(They fall asleep cuddling, every night. There’s only so far a couch will take you.)

\--

_Season finale of 52. Popcorn. Soda. A few others are over, too, guys in the film club, a couple girls. One has blonde hair and a snub nose and is flat and brutally honest and sells them alcohol- but today, she’s got a bunch of bottles and a stash of weed that she’s not charging for. She even gave them a smile when she walked into the apartment, small and not meeting her eyes- but the gesture was there._

_The night passes in fragments. They smoke, they drink, they talk as they wait for the episode to start, and then for three hours, it’s just- silence, as the finale runs. The episode goes by in a blur, and when they hear that Amami and Shirogane are going to return for a second season, they cheer in delight. The ending always leaves them high on hope, and everyone is chatting and excited and for a little while they all have something in common._

_He finds himself out on the roof a while later, classmates he doesn’t know and definitely doesn’t trust fucking around in his apartment while he smokes- just tobacco, now. He’s already so high that he can’t feel his face, but his mind feels weirdly clear. Body strand, he guesses. Or maybe he just thinks he’s more level-headed than he is._

_Someone climbs through the maintenance hatch, and he doesn’t need to look to know who it is. He does, anyway, just to watch them come over. His expression is dopey, but he doesn’t have the presence of mind to change it._

_On the other hand, when his best friend comes up and sits down next to him, he looks radiant. He’s flushed with booze, eyes dark and dilated, and excitement clear on his features. “Hey.”_

_He offers out the cigarette like he’s offering a sword to his king, offers everything he has. “Hey.”_

_“Cool ending, right?” He takes the cigarette, holds it to his mouth and swings his legs off the side of the building. It’d be so easy for either of them to fall, to turn to nothing but red on the pavement._

_“Really cool. I can’t wait to see Amami again.”_

_“You just think he’s…” Pause to blow out smoke, mouth curling up, wonderland-caterpillar. “Sexy.”_

_“Shut the fuck up.” It’s not wrong, but they can’t say it like that. It has to be joking, teasing, haha, what-if. He nudges his shoulder, smiles, takes back the cigarette. Their knuckles brush._

_Quiet, as he inhales and exhales, feeling the smoke curl in his lungs, ticklish, teasing. The body next to him shifts again, restless. “You really feel good leaving them alone in your place? They’ll probably wreck it.”_

_“Eh.” Pulls a knee to his chest, lets his other foot dangle over the oblivion below. “Not much I care about in there, really.”_

_A pretend gasp. “Even the things I’ve given you? What about that Monokuma plushie I bought?”_

_He passes back the smoke, casts a grin over his shoulder, lets it linger. “All the important stuff is locked in my closet, don’t worry. I figured I should keep it tucked up before anyone arrived.” He pauses. He’s still higher than words. “All the stuff you gave me is in there.”_

_And he watches, as that slender, dangerous figure, all harsh joints and nervous twitches, breathes in. Follows the smoke down his throat, white and bruised, to his collarbones, angled and dangerous, to the loose sweater he’s wearing (because he only ever wears loose, long clothes.) Follows it back out again, as he breathes out into the night, his face flushed redder beyond just booze. “Don’t say stuff like that.”_

_He doesn’t say anymore, but he inches closer. “I’m glad you’re here.”_

_“I wouldn’t miss it, silly.” Fondness, in those violet eyes. He holds out the cigarette again, barely burning. “Wanna finish it off?”_

_He shakes his head, gets a shrug in response. They both stare into the city, into the night, the cool air fanning over their faces. Thinks about life, and how shit it is, and how happy he was today, surrounded by people who could at least tolerate him- surrounded by_ **_him,_ ** _his hair like snakes and eyes like crystals, shy and silent until they could creep away._

_“We should audition,” he says._

_Silence, for a little longer. He’s got vertigo just sitting down._

_Then, “the survivors are always really fucked up. Especially the ones who don’t win.”_

_“We could win,” he says, false confidence that comes too easily. Looks over at him. “They can’t change how smart you are, and we’re smart. And we’ve been through so much- we could handle it.” He snorts, the sound scraping his throat. “It’s not like I haven’t seen death before.”_ _  
_ _He never talks about it, never, but he thinks about it now, about his parents, and his family, and the diseased blood that runs through him, the way he can’t stop thinking about it. The way he’s always known he would die violently, blood dripping from his mouth, his family standing behind him. Crime, and death, and emptiness. There’s a reason he always liked the detective characters._

_The boy next to him grimaces, half-laughing at the awful joke that isn’t funny, not really. “I’ve wanted to,” he admits. “For ages. I think-” He flops backwards, and for a heart-wrenching moment it looks like he might see-saw himself off the side of the roof. “I want…. Some meaning here. I want to- to make plans, and have something to achieve. I’m sick of feeling so… so restless. I want something exciting.” He makes a box shape with his hands, angled up at the sky._

_Laughs, again, staring at the most exciting person he knows, the way rot and death flow through both of them. “Me too. I want to feel that… that desire to fight for something. The ultimate hope.” He closes his eyes. “I want to be part of that, even if I die.”_

_“You talk like you want to die.” Another thing they never talk about, not when they’re sober, but the boy holding the box to the stars lowers his hands, Pandora, and opens them out. His eyes glint in the darkness._

_He grins, sheepishly. “You know, they’ve never executed an ultimate detective before. They’re always… good.” Clean, whole, passionate. He could be the first broken one._

_“You’re good.” It’s a lie, coming from the mouth of a liar, but he looks like he believes it, sitting up. “You could help me with my elaborate murder plans.”_

_“Before I inevitably betray you and you make my trial more confusing for the others out of anger.” Laughter, again, and they’re both laughing, sinking against each other._

_They wouldn’t go into the game to win. They both know that. It’s the death-chase, the obsession that fuels both of them, the cling to… anything. Danganronpa is a game of despair and hope. Hope’s never been on the table for them, not really. But it could be. They could be different people, better people, exciting and complicated, pushed to the edge of their morals and their wits._

_“I wouldn’t go in without you,” the liar says after a moment._

_He knows it’s true. Leans over to squeeze his hand, just for a moment, because everyone else is inside and can’t see them here. “I wouldn’t, either.”_

_Nobody who survives Danganronpa is happy. But they’re not happy, anyway. Maybe this desire to die will be satiated some way like this. Maybe it won't._

_What're the chances of both of them getting picked, anyway?  
Astronomical._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shuichi how did you get so many POVs this chapter. you're so hard to write how did this happen. (i rearranged my event order. thats what happened. look forward to a chapter like 6? chaps away that has a lot of kokichi in it)


	10. as a result of not noticing,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tojo shares around drink after drink, until Kaede swats her arm and tells her to relax, and takes over refilling the cups. She asks Gonta about how school’s going, and then they’re all discussing their progress- the hardest classes, the easiest ones. Kokichi informs them that they’re all stupid for buying into the system, and drags up a genuinely interesting philosophical argument about the accessability of academia and the morality of buying into something so inherently classist. Eventually, most of the others return to regular conversation, but he and Shuichi have shifted to fully face each other, completely absorbed in this new debate. Kaede, scoffing, pulls them apart after Shuichi groans about ad hominen arguments for the nineteenth time. “Honestly,” she says. “Don’t you two get enough debating at home?”
> 
> It’s never enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi its me again! I'm sorry this is late, it was a little ambitious and i overthought it a bit. but i've got another very sappy indulgent chapter here. I actually think this one is TOO romantic haha. Anyway, welcome to the next sorta arc! If you can consider this to have arcs. I do, but that’s mostly for my own sanity.

_server: my trauma is cooler than your trauma_

**depression ™:** _@everyone_ baseball tomorrow. be there.

 **DEGENERACY:** _@gorgeousgirlgenius_ ahem

 **gorgeousgirlgenius:** u forget about baseball ONCE….

 **DEGENERACY:** we do it EVERY WEEK how do you forget

 **gorgeousgirlgenius:** I WAS BUSY THINKING ABT MY NEW PROJECT

 **ultimateclown:** iruma cares more about her projects than us, you heard it here first

 **gorgeousgirlgenius:** AS IF YOU CARE ABOUT ANYTHING 

**your wish is not my command, ouma:** I have found a new sandwich recipe I’m quite excited to share. Make sure to work up an appetite in tomorrow’s game- I was a little overzealous with the lunch I prepared.

 **thanks mom:** Ahh Kirumi!!! That’s so sweet my gosh. I’m looking forward to it! <3

 **makiroll:** if everyone could make an effort to be ON TIME tomorrow it would be appreciated. Remember, the Foundation has to pay if we go over time.

 **ultimateclown:** not our money lol.

 **makiroll:** ….

 **thanks mom:** Right, but we want to make sure we keep a good relationship with them, right? It’s important when it comes to bringing down you-know-what.

 **magicgirl:** VOLDEMORT??

 **thanks mom:** ...Sure, Yumeno!

\--

Shuichi slips out of the uber, followed closely by Kokichi. They’re always careful, getting transport, moving from place to place- the whole group has something of a buddy system, locations linked to each other’s phones at all times, and the VRF marks them as ‘important customers’, their safety promised and assured by any transport system they agree to use. Still, Shuichi prefers taking the train with a mask high on his face to getting in a car, and he only does it when he has someone else with him. On the bright side, he should be getting his license soon.

Kokichi pulls his hoodie off as he steps out, tying it around his waist and making a show of fanning himself in the sun. Shuichi looks over at him fondly, the way his eyelashes beat over the scattering of freckles on his cheeks. Being beside Kokichi gives him a stupid rush in his stomach, when they show up to meet with the others and they’re walking together, talking about their home- it’s foolish, but he can’t help feeling a little… proud of it, of being the one that Kokichi puts up with, the one that he lives with, the one he sticks to.  
“Ugh, I hope they have air conditioning in here,” Kokichi groans, drooping his whole body down. Shuichi almost- almost reaches out to touch his hair, but curls his fingers back before they can stretch out. 

“You know they do,” he says instead, taking a few steps forward so he isn’t tempted to pat Kokichi’s back. “Come on, supreme leader, we’ve got a baseball game to lose.”

Kokichi grumbles, but pulls himself up, following after Shuichi in a way that’s just as good, to look back in the corner of his eye and see him gesturing wildly as he speaks, all animated expressions and quick hands. “I hate sports. Games should be about strategy, and chance, and your mind. This all comes up to ‘who can run the fastest and hit the ball the most accurately’. It’s barely even a game.”

“Well, we might win this round,” says Shuichi, who is in a good mood this morning and doesn’t mind knowing that they’re probably going to get absolutely stomped by the combined power of Maki + Chabashira + Tojo, which even Gonta and Kaito can’t compete with. They put up a pretty good fight and even win sometimes, but the gender split is just a little bit unfair when you have the ultimate assassin and a maid with pretty deadly aim working together. Particularly when Hoshi refuses to side with one team more than the other, as that would be too unfair an advantage. He just stays on the batting team, and Himiko stays on the fielding one (so she doesn’t have to run.) They both seem to consider themselves part of whatever team wins. 

Shuichi’s good mood persists as Kokichi rolls his eyes dramatically before pulling up a smirk. “Whatever you say, detective. Hope is a good look on you.” 

The two of them walk into the lobby of the gym and sign in. Shuichi makes casual conversation with the receptionist, who still treats them a little like superstars, and Kokichi lies to her about his latest experiments with drug dealing. 

They walk into the main gym, and are greeted with a rush of excited sound, Kaito immediately bounding over to tell them both about how Maki almost got in a fight with this guy on the street as they were coming over. A few people stand in proper workout gear- Maki, Chabashira, Hoshi, but most of them are simply in casual clothes, jackets tosses aside or tied to their wastes. Shuichi’s no different, simply dumping his jacket to the side and cuffing his jeans- which, yes, black skinny jeans are not the best item of clothing to play baseball in. But Kaede said they were flattering, and it’s been a while since Shuichi has felt good about his appearance at all, so the jeans stay. At least his shirt is loose, and he rolls the grey sleeves up to his elbows as he chats to Kaito, who makes fun of his jeans and his ‘emo’ fashion for a while, which Kokichi gleefully joins in on. Shuichi puts up with it pretty well, he thinks, laughing it off and pointing out how his eyeliner is actually borrowed from Kokichi, who, by the way, is not the most sophisticated dresser himself. He makes fun of Kaito’s hair right back to him, and then Kokichi joins in on that, and then they make fun of Kokichi’s clown makeup, and it’s. Surprisingly nice, making fun of each other, bickering about things that really don’t matter. Things that endear them- the tufts of Kaito’s hair, how overly-gelled it is. The splash of color on Kokichi’s eyelids. The way his mouth quirks up into a grin. 

Kaede pulls him over, next, to help her set up the bases. He does, happily, and he asks her about her apartment and her progress with the piano, and she answers both cheerfully. Things are going well. Her schooling is going well, too. She’s thinking about maybe becoming a teacher when she’s older. Shuichi tells her he can’t imagine anyone who could be better than that. She turns pink, and asks him about his school, which is also going well. They talk for a bit about the case against Danganronpa, about whether he’ll accept some of the offers made by various police precincts, if he’s going to go into university, if he’s aiming for scholarships. Then they talk about Kokichi, and Kaede’s ever-growing list of fans and friends. When Chabashira calls her over to talk strategy, Kaede gives him a wave and laugh and promises to question him more about his rooming arrangement- with a little wink added on at the end that makes him uneasy. 

Others file in- Amami and Shinguji together, Iruma on her own but closely followed by Tojo, Himiko and Yonaga who immediately run over to their other roommates and apologize for sleeping in, as they do every week. Shuichi laughs at them as he helps Tojo set up her freezer bin and her jugs of juice and fruit. He looks around the room, at his friends, his- classmates, really, the people he helps with school and meets up with during the week and every Saturday. Gonta and Hoshi are discussing something, and Hoshi’s face looks far softer than he’d ever seen before those two moved in together. Maki’s been dragged into a conversation with Himiko and her girls, and although her expression is serious as she speaks, the others are all beaming at her, with all the adoration she deserves. Shinguji is quietly speaking to Kaito, his hair choppily cut around his shoulders, his mask yellow today, not black. Kaito has a hand on his shoulder and is laughing about whatever they’re saying, Shinguji’s eyes softened, not sharp. A few feet away, Kaede and Amami are fending off Iruma’s assistance, scolding her as she tries to rearrange some of the gym equipment, laughing as she darts away. Shuichi’s gaze drifts a little further, and he sees Kokichi leaning against a wall, watching them just like he is. Their eyes meet, for a moment, and Kokichi’s expression, unreadable and confusing, slowly curves up into a smile. Shuichi smiles back, and he’s proud of him beyond words, of him being able to be here, to be quiet and as honest as he can be- how he can be honest when they’re at home, when they’ve found a moment of peace. Kokichi is… remarkable. In every way. The way he’s swung back into action, into life, the way he pulls himself together when he falls apart, the way he looks after Shuichi, and the others, how he tries to make their lives easier.  
Shuichi smiles over at him, and he smiles back. His gaze dips away, after a moment, and then he walks over to go and join Gonta and Hoshi’s conversation, a new, playful smirk fixed on his face.

“We’ve all done an impressive job healing,” Tojo says.

Shuichi jumps, swiftly turning around as color fills his cheeks. “Uh. I- y-yeah, we have.” He clears his throat, tries not to just think about Kokichi. Stupid. He’s got other friends, other people he needs to prioritize, too. He can’t just get wrapped up in one person, even if every time he’s around he’s the most distracting thing in the room. 

Tojo smiles at him, soft and small. He hasn’t really had much to do with her out of the simulation- she likes to keep to herself, and the one time he’d asked, gently, if she’d like to make a statement about Danganronpa, she’d grown so… embarrassed, and ashamed, and guilty, that he’d felt awful for even asking. “It’s interesting how relationships change, isn’t it? How you can find yourself growing close to people you didn’t imagine you had much in common with at all… how everyone around you seems so important.” Her voice grows a little distant, as if she’s speaking personally, before she shakes her head and moves over to rearrange the bowl of oranges. 

Shuichi watches her, tucking one hand behind him. “Yeah… I can’t believe it’s been- wow, it’s almost a year, isn’t it?” It’s gone by so fast. There were days in the Danganronpa compound that felt like decades. Recent weeks seem to have flown by in the blink of an eye. 

Tojo blinks, like even she’s surprised to hear it put like that. “Almost eleven months since the simulation ended,” she murmurs. “We’ll have to celebrate the anniversary soon.”

Shuichi smiles at that thought- another party, held in one of their apartments, full of food and laughter and victory. “Everyone means more to me than- anything,” he admits, quietly. It’s true. They’re really all so important. She looks back to him and smiles again. 

“We all feel the same, Saihara-kun. And you in particular… your efforts are truly appreciated. Even by those of us who don’t… who might not express it enough.” She bows her head, for a moment, guilt flashing over her face. 

“N-no, Tojo, I don’t- I don’t need anything like that,” Shuichi stammers, unsure if he should reach out to her or not. “I’m happy to do it, really. A-and I’ve got a lot of help! Kaede and Kokichi, they’re both really helpful with my interview notes and arranging the evidence and stuff…”

Tojo nods, straightening the set up row of cups. “Of course. You deserve that support. We all do.” 

“That includes you, right?” He asks, and is rewarded with a soft laugh. Tojo is really hard to understand. 

But she nods, finishing up her arrangement of cups and turning to him, her hands folded. It’s odd to see her like this, in casual exercise gear, still with the stance of a maid as she bows her head. “Of course. I am working on learning to take care of myself.” Shuichi can do nothing but smile at her at that, and she smiles back, almost shyly. “Now, shall we rejoin the others? I believe that is about everything, for now.” 

The game goes forward. The girls stand up to bat first, and Shuichi heads out to field. Kokichi, who usually sticks himself by a base and bullies the people who get stuck on it between rounds, follows him out today, and they stand near the back and chase after the balls and trip over each other and everyone else. It’s as much of a mess as it always is, that ends with Kaito having to take a five minute break after he, triumphantly, catches a ball mid-air and promptly falls on his face. They play well, despite the disasters, and when they go up to bat they actually manage to overtake the girls, which is the first time it’s happened in a while. Of course, in the next round, they get thrashed, and though they manage to bring it back in the fourth and final round, they end up tying, which means no one is satisfied and Chabashira and Kaito end up one-v-one racing each other by the bases as the rest of them watch and laugh. By the time Kirumi calls them over to eat, they’re all equally tired out and boisterous, and the conversation is _loud._

They’re eating, triumphant, making the most of their last twenty minutes before they need to get out of the gym. Kokichi sits on Shuichi’s left, their thighs pressed together, and he is hyper aware of the touch. On his right is Kaede, who leans on him and laughs and shoves and pinches his shoulder. She is alive, and she is there, and Kaito is across the table, and Kokichi is next to him, and they’re alive. All Shuichi’s favourite people, sitting around a table with sandwiches and juice and orange slices. They talk about the game they just played, the only game that seems important right now. They talk about going out together after this, maybe to a park or something. Shuichi asks Kokichi if they have any plans, and Kokichi rolls his eyes and says “well, you’re still trying to rearrange that damn bookshelf, but I’m sure it can survive without you for a _day._ ” And they all laugh, as Shuichi splutters to defend himself, and they laugh as Kaede pokes him in the side, and they laugh as he, defensively, points out Kokichi’s obsession with keeping the same song on loop.  
Orange juice drips down his wrist.

He and Kaito arm wrestle across the table, and Kaito crushes him- obviously. This is very amusing to everyone, but not quite as amusing as it is when Maki, blank-faced, turns to Kaito and offers her own hand- and then proceeds to full body slam him into the bench. He sits up, looking dazed, and insists it didn’t hurt at all, and doesn’t stop staring at Maki for the next five minutes, absolutely head over heels. She flushes and avoids his eye, but seems quietly pleased as the conversation continues.

Shuichi bites his tongue, the pain sudden and surprising.

Tojo shares around drink after drink, until Kaede swats her arm and tells her to relax, and takes over refilling the cups. She asks Gonta about how school’s going, and then they’re all discussing their progress- the hardest classes, the easiest ones. Kokichi informs them that they’re all stupid for buying into the system, and drags up a genuinely interesting philosophical argument about the accessability of academia and the morality of buying into something so inherently classist. Eventually, most of the others return to regular conversation, but he and Shuichi have shifted to fully face each other, completely absorbed in this new debate. Kaede, scoffing, pulls them apart after Shuichi groans about ad hominen arguments for the nineteenth time. “Honestly,” she says. “Don’t you two get enough debating at home?”

It’s never enough.

It’s never enough, never, there will never be enough time with these people, with his friends, the people he loves and would die for in a second. The people he wants to apologize to, will never be able to apologize enough. Kaito, bright grin, spiked hair, confidence and a desire to protect, a genuine care in his heart, even if he stumbles through sensitive interactions. Maki, cool eyes, lowered gaze, all bravery and quiet love and burning passion, who would do anything for any of them, even if she can’t express it. Kaede, god, sitting next to him with a gaze like home, intelligence and assertiveness and sweetness bundled up into a package that Danganronpa couldn’t control. Himiko, shy and soporific and doing her fucking best every day, waking up with ghosts and pushing forward, keeping her chin up, who seems so young and so much older. Kokichi… Kokichi who he can’t even begin to define- but if he did, he’d start with his eyes, with the spark in them when he’s excited, the way they crease when he smiles and crinkle when he smirks, how he can summon tears to them like breathing, the places where his eyeliner flakes off, the freckles so close to them. Kokichi, with his hair like Medusa’s, curling and living and animated, always, always with a retort ready, a sharp piece of wit. He loves them, loves them like they’re a part of him, every piece of pain his own- one long body, spread out around a table. Something like a family. 

He is too distracted to notice. He is always too slow. He always has been.

They chatter, and cheer, and at the end of it, they’re late as always, packing up Tojo’s leftovers with her utensils. The air tastes sweet. Shuichi glances at his phone and thinks _huh, usually they send someone in by now,_ but then he doesn’t think any more of it. They’ve gone overtime, but they’ll bargain about the costs later. It’ll work out.  
He’s swinging his jacket back on, tired after all the exercise, when Kokichi moans about how sleepy he is. Shuichi laughs, turning to zip Kokichi’s up for him, scolding him fondly, and they’re looking at each other, and he can hear Kaede, close by and happy, and he’s so happy. He’s so happy. 

Kokichi’s eyes flick up from Shuichi’s face to one of the windows in the gym, high in the building. He looks flustered, momentarily, and then he frowns. 

“Hey,” he says. “When did that break?”

Shuichi turns around, looks at the window, and he notices, faintly, like he’s swimming in his own thoughts, that the windows that are always open are all closed- except that one, dead center and shattered. He flicks back through the events earlier, wonders if there was any stand-out sounds-

He looks down, sharply. Lying on the floor of the gym is an innocent little gas canister, covered in glass. It must have been thrown through while they were all yelling, he thinks faintly, for none of them to have noticed. And because of the positioning, they couldn’t view it from the table, not with how it had rolled between a set of exercise bikes. 

“Kokichi,” he says, watching the little metal bottle hiss, his heart starting to pound, the weariness of his own body starting to alarm him. “Kokichi, go and break a window.”

Immediately, any trace of humor is wiped from Kokichi’s face and he nods, and their eyes lock together for one, frozen moment. They’re on the same page. Kokichi’s too quick to fall behind.

He breaks into a run for the window at the back of the gym, a little lower than the others, and he’s shoving a table up to it as Shuichi turns and runs for the main doors of the gym. He shoves on them, but they don’t swing open- they catch, and lock, and he curses himself as Kaede and the others turn to him and ask if he’s okay. “Kokichi, do you have your picks?” Shuichi yells, his voice taking on a frantic tone. He gives up and sprints to the doors to the changing rooms as Kokichi yells back a negative.

“Shuichi, what’s going on?” Maki asks, her voice low and concerned. Kaito runs after him as Shuichi starts rattling the changing room doors. Nothing. They don’t budge.

“Shuichi, get over here and give me a boost,” Kokichi shouts, balancing on the top of his table, fingers brushing against the window sill. Shuichi immediately turns on his heel and sprints over, adrenaline burning through his system even as his bones feel like they’re pulled down, and then the sound of glass shattering fills the room and everything goes to hell.

Himiko, Gonta, screaming, clutching at their friends. Kaede calling out for him, even more frantically, Amami trying to keep everyone calm, Maki rushing over to grab the canister. She reels her arm back, other hand pressed to her nose and mouth, and throws it through the window like she’s aiming for gold in the shot put. Immediately, three others smash through the window and the room starts to swim. Hoshi’s batting balls at the windows, shattering them two at a time, trying to let in a little more air but they’re _so high up._ Chabashira is trying to kick her way through the main doors, Gonta rushing over to help her. Shuichi reaches Kokichi’s side and is pulled up onto the table and another bottle of gas crashes through the window and they have to duck to miss it. Everything tastes sweet, too sweet, musty in a weird way. He scoops up Kokichi as everything gets darker, and he can hear hissing coming from all around them, and Kokichi smashes an elbow through the glass, has to try twice, and Shuichi holds him tight and sluggishly tries to stop him from forcing his fingers through.

“Help!” Kokichi screams, grasping at the window frame. “Help, we’re being attacked!”

And Shuichi thinks, distantly, that he should have known things were too good to last. The world goes dark, and all he can do, as he falls backward, is hope to cushion Kokichi’s fall.

\--

_Day one._

Kokichi’s breath comes first, and then the flutter of his eyelashes, and then his mind.  
He opens his eyes, finds darkness in answer, and tries to push himself up- only to find slim metal walls encasing him, locked up in a box.  
 _Oh,_ he thinks, his mind diseased and distracted and instantly dissolving into panic. _It’s a locker. Just like in the game._  
And he knows that, realistically, sliding his hands over the sides of the box, but he can’t help thinking _press_ and _death_ and panic. 

God, he can- he can hear it, the whirr of the press, he can feel Momota’s fucking pity, he can see the way it’s coming down on him, metal on metal, and he never had claustrophobia before but he sure fucking does now- he can’t even handle himself in the elevator, has to take the stairs up to their apartment every day. Their apartment, with Shuichi, and fuck, he’s got to get up, got to find Shuichi, got to find the others, got to make sure they’re okay, and where is he, where the fuck is he, he can’t stop feeling-

He squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not dying. He died quickly, not slow, because Momota broke that awful, infernal press. He’s not dying, because he wouldn’t be dying this… slow, wouldn’t be melting into ooze. His bones broke all at once, his mind wiped out, it was nothing but goo, his guts burst like liquid and he watched it on his stupid monopad in that stupid compound. He’s not dying. He’s not dead.  
He cracks open one eye. It’s still dark, but there are gaps of light at the top of his cage. Kokichi takes a deep breath, scraping his lungs, and stumbles to his feet. He doesn’t have any feeling in his lower legs, but he can sort of get them to work as he rocks forward, props himself upright, shoves forward.

The door clicks open easily. 

Kokichi stares out into the classroom he first woke up in- the first place that Ouma Kokichi was truly born. The place that shaped him. The place that features in every goddamn one of his dreams. He laughs.  
This is no joyous homecoming. This is broken, and terrifying, and wrong, and he can’t- he can’t tell if he’s hallucinating or not. When he stumbles forward, he crashes into a desk. When he bites his thumb, he feels it ache. He pinches his cheek, shakes his head, slumps onto the floor. Tries to wait for the sensation of cold metal to slide off his skin. 

Ouma Kokichi closes his eyes, and he assesses his options. On one hand, he’s hallucinating all of this. In that case, his best move is probably to stay still so he doesn’t accidentally walk off a cliff. On the other hand, someone is playing a very, very sick joke on him. In that case, he should probably take a look around.  
In either case, he should get a grip. 

He manages to pull himself on top of a desk, and takes the time to inspect his body. He doesn’t find any tender injection sites or concerning injuries. What is worrying, however, is that he’s been forced into a facsimile of his in-game uniform, right down to the colored buttons and weird, dangly straps. (he thought it was funny, when he remembered designing it himself. Now that he knows someone else designed it for him, the straight-jacket elements don’t feel quite so cute.) He touches his face, rubs his cheeks, and realizes that his makeup has been scrubbed off. Also concerning is the metal bracelet fucking affixed to his wrist, with an odd black patch like a watch screen on it. His hair’s untouched, though, and it’s only when he sits up and watches the ends of it curl around his chest that he realizes just how _long_ it’s gotten, almost draping around his arms when he doesn’t twist it up.  
The feeling starts to return to his legs after a while, and Kokichi searches his pockets, finds no phone, no lock picks, no pocket knife or crumpled post it. No wallet or packet of morning glory seeds. No waiting text from Shuichi.  
It’s funny, really, how the lack of the possessions Kokichi packed this morning is what really cements for him that things are different. That whoever he was earlier today...the person who woke up and watered his pot plants and listened to the same song he’s been listening to since he woke up and found it in the middle of a youtube playlist about trauma and it really stuck with him- that person can’t survive here. Not the person who does nice things for Shuichi, who tries to make their classmates comfortable, who apologized to Gonta and Miu publically. That Kokichi wouldn’t have made it two days through the first killing game. That Kokichi is too close to Akamatsu, too many emotions, not enough logic.

That Kokichi gets folded up into a little box and tucked into his pocket. By the time the door to the classroom swings open, he’s developed three different plans of attack, and twelve potential scripts to work on whoever comes through the door. 

The people who come through the door are… not expected. He immediately assesses them and figures that they are… probably not the people who kidnapped him. Although, considering Shirogane and all, that means little in this kind of situation. 

A man who looks slightly older than him steps through first, followed by a person of indiscernible gender who could be either thirteen or thirty, and then a girl who looks about the same age. The man stops in his tracks, the door swinging into the others, as he stares over at Kokichi, mouth dropped.

“No way,” he says, voice soft. “It’s Ouma.” 

“No it is not, shut up,” the girl says, pushing past him- and then she gasps, her hands flying up to her mouth. “Ah!”

The third member of their odd little group pushes up their glasses and scowls. Kokichi notes that they’re wearing a mask, and some unfortunately clingy part of his soft-idiot-brain goes _Shinguji?_ “Well,” not-Shinguji says, “that makes things a lot more concerning.”

Kokichi stares at them for a while, from his throne made of desks, chin tilted up imperiously, before he lowers his head, dips into a smirk, lifts a finger to his lips. “Well, it seems as if my reputation proceeds me.”

The man, who looks like more of a boy when he moves closer, walks over to stand by him, with an unsettling expression on his face. “I… do you remember what happened to you?”

Awfully bold of them to expect a straight answer, huh? Kokichi tilts his head to the side. “Hm? Eh...Maybe. My head is awfully sore.”

“He’s lying,” glasses and mask says, at the same time as girl with heart-shaped buns says, “Ah! Michi, check up on him!”

Man-boy-with-floppy-lilac-hair glances over his shoulder at his companions, and then back to Shuichi. He looks just as… grossly impressed. Reverent. Kokichi can’t stand it. “Still a liar, huh? I’ve got to say… I was really impressed with your plan in your season. They say Saihara brought down Danganronpa, but he definitely couldn’t have done it without you.”

Kokichi finds it’s not so hard to tuck away all his gentler pieces when he’s faced with strangers he, honestly, couldn’t give a shit about. He bunches his hands into fists, beams, pulls sparks to his eyes. “Huh? Really? You really think I was that helpful?”

“Yeah!” Floppy hair says, leaning in, his hands clasped together. 

Kokichi beams at him a moment longer before he bats his eyes and speaks, still smiling. “Well, you’re smarter than you look, I guess!” He drops the smile, twirls a finger in his hair, bored and disdainful. “Obviously he couldn’t have done it without me. We saw the same show, right? I seem to remember my leftover evidence and blueprints and little ol’ treasure hunt being the only things to lead those idiots to the truth.” He doesn’t actually think that- he thinks the fact that they had to rely on his not-will at all is embarrassing and a mark of his own failure. But this idiot doesn’t need to go about trying to flatter him.

Floppy hair’s face falls like he’s been kicked in the gut. Glasses and mask snorts. “Maybe try introducing yourself next time,” they say, and then they step over to stand in front of Kokichi.  
“I am Tsuji Michi,” not-Shinguji says, bowing their head. “If you know me from my time in that-” a pause, their left eye twitching, “show, then you know me as the ultimate paramedic and the girl who got murdered in the fourth trial. For the record, I don’t identify as a girl any longer, and I solely use they/them pronouns. Also, fuck Danganronpa.”

“Gotcha,” Kokichi says, nothing but impressed with the ability to come out so assuredly to a total stranger in what looks like a model killing game. Still, empathetic understanding of gender identity aside, Kokichi has a reputation- one that he’d like to keep up if things turn sour, thanks. “But don’t worry. I have zero interest in any of you or in your killing games.” He turns his hand over, inspects his nails- still painted the same color they were this morning, even if his makeup’s been wiped off. Must have been a bit rushed for time, these captors. 

“Charming,” Tsuji Michi drawls, looking not at all impressed. Everyone’s a critic.

“Ah, I’m… Yoshida Ayako,” the girl next to them says, twisting up the fabric of her pink, heart-patterned skirt. “But you can just call me Aya!”

“What was your ultimate?” He asks, glancing up from his nails. It’s the sort of question he’d hate getting, but she just smiles.

“Ah... it’s silly, but I was the ultimate matchmaker!” She bites her lip, looks simultaneously embarrassed and a little flattered. “Though I wasn’t there for very long- I died in the first round.”

Floppy hair is still pouting, right up until Tsuji kicks his leg. He immediately hisses, and then quickly dips into a bow. “Um- I’m Kuse Satoshi. I wasn’t in the same season as these two- I’m from season 50. I was the ultimate herbalist.” He straightens up, gestures to the belt around his waist, filled with little, mystic-looking pouches, and the pocket on his overalls with flowers sticking out.

“You were in different seasons?” Kokichi tilts his head, the angle precise, his expressions monitored carefully. Kuse grins at him.

“Yeah!” he says, tapping his fingertips together. “These two were in the season just before yours- 52, right?”

“Right,” Yoshida- Aya- says, ducking her head. “It… it wasn’t too popular. People thought the show was getting a bit repetitive- it’s why they brought Shirogane and Amami back.”

Kokichi processes that information, quickly tucking it away. Of course, Shirogane and Amami had been in the previous killing game. These people probably know them. 

Tsuji tilts their head. “And you’re Ouma, right?” It comes out so confidently, secured, like he’s a household name.

Kokichi blinks. “That’s what they tell me.” He slicks on a grin, lifting an eyebrow. “Unless I’m really Shirogane in disguise.”

“Ugh. No, I think I’d be able to tell if I was near that snake again,” Aya says, her shy, cheerful aura suddenly dropping as her face twists. “I mean, it’s one thing to be forced into another game as execution, but she actually went out and _joined_ them.”

“She was always a bitch,” Tsuji says, matter-of-factly, as they adjust their gloves. “More importantly; Ouma-san, are you going to tell us anything useful? Where’s Saihara?”

“Saihara?” Kokichi raises an eyebrow. “Why would I know where he is? I’ve been kidnapped.”

Suddenly, floppy-haired Kuse decides to sober up, all traces of sheepish admiration gone from his face. “If you’re here, there are probably others. Do you really not remember anything?”

“Plus, you’re always with Saihara,” Aya, ultimate matchmaker says, her voice back to sugar-sweetness. He doesn’t trust her one bit.

Kokichi shifts- the statement feels like a threat to his over-sensitive ears. “We’re roommates.” He sighs, rolls his whole head around, and then slips off the desk, gives a twirl, and heads to the door. “Well, if I don’t know where Saihara is, and you don’t know where Saihara is, we better get looking, right?”

All three of them stare at him for a beat, before they nod and move forward. “Alright,” Tsuji says. “Although I have a bad feeling about this.”

 _You and me both, buddy,_ Kokichi thinks.

They wander out of the classroom and through the ground floor- or first floor. It’s… confusing. The bars aren’t up around the main lobby, but the doors don’t even budge, to the point that Kokichi theorizes there’s just a wall behind them. Similarly, none of the windows give, even a little, and he’s starting to feel like they aren’t made of glass. They check out the workshop, the empty school store, and then they near the dining hall.

The second Kokichi pushes open the door, a familiar voice worms through his brain.  
“- it’ll be okay, we’ve just got to stay calm, please calm down, Iruma-san-”

Kokichi, all thoughts of investigation gone, practically flies into the room, the door swinging shut behind him on Aya’s face. She yelps, but he barely processes it, too busy staring at the way Shuichi, all tired eyes and worry lines, looks up at him and the way his face almost blooms.  
And he couldn’t stop himself from barreling over, ignoring the large group of teenagers lurking around them, throwing himself at Shuichi. His heart is pounding in his chest, and Shuichi squeaks and stumbles back as he struggles to catch him, and he lets out a cry of _“Shumai!”_ that is joking and playful and joking and joking and oh god he’s so glad to see him. 

“Kokichi!” Shuichi says, rocking back on his feet for a moment before he plants them both down, his arms secure around Kokichi’s back as he sets him back. “Oh, god, are you okay? Where did you wake up?” 

Shuichi’s hands keep patting over Kokichi’s arms, like he’s checking for injury, and neither of them step away. He feels a grin breaking out despite himself, and there are people around them, people he doesn’t trust, but he can’t help smiling. Luckily, Kokichi is an excellent liar, and can use that to his advantage as he bats his eyes and swings off the detective’s arms- who doesn’t look fooled at all. Still, he opens his mouth and crows. “Dumbass Shumai, I’m fine! What, what, you thought the supreme leader of evil would get himself in trouble?”

“You’re nothing but trouble,” Shuichi says, fondly, and he finally moves away, like he’s only now secured that Kokichi is really there. “I-” The detective glances over, and Kokichi follows his gaze, to the group of students milling around them- he notices Akamatsu and Momota and Harukawa, with Miu hanging off Akamatsu’s shoulders and Yumeno shrinking by Harukawa, and a few other strangers lurking at the corners. They all seem distracted by the newcomers, bursting into questions as soon as they’ve established Kokichi’s presence. Akamatsu gives him a nod, Miu a knowing smile, and then it’s introduction and questioning time.  
Kokichi and Shuichi look back to each other. Shuichi lowers his head, and his voice. “I was really worried,” he says quietly.

“Of course you were,” Kokichi says, Shuichi’s voice humming beneath his skin restlessly. This is dangerous. They’re in a dangerous situation. Everything adds up to… nothing good. And now he’s got someone he- looking at Shuichi, he can’t even deny it. He’s got someone he’s going to worry about now. Great. Wonderful. Great, Shuichi is here and he’s in danger like the rest of them, and now Kokichi has to factor that into any plan he makes. Great, there’s someone here who can see through him a good sixty-to-seventy percent of the time. He keeps smiling even as his stomach sinks.

Shuichi laughs, softly, and leans in even closer, voice low in his throat. “Hey, let’s stick together, alright? And… I’ll go along with anything you plan. Just let me know what you need me for.”

Kokichi blinks at him. Shuichi, who he wants to be safe. Shuichi, who he can’t… can’t imagine not coming home to. Shuichi who is brilliant and smart and has always seemed an unattainable rival, parallel lines running together. Ultimate detective, tortured genius, roommate and friend. Kokichi knows the lines of Shuichi’s arms like he knows his own, the moles on his shoulderblades, the dip in his collar that’s the right place to rest his head on.  
He can feel how his grin has faded, how his face has gone all blank as he tries to deal with idiot Shuichi and his stupid, awful, speeches about trust and healing that have made Kokichi soft. Kokichi isn’t soft. Kokichi won’t die here. Kokichi won’t let whatever sick bastards snatched him get what they want. Kokichi will do whatever the fuck it takes. He will do anything, and he doesn’t care if Shuichi approves, or thinks he’s cruel, or evil, or if he-  
Well, Shuichi probably wouldn’t die in his plans, anyway. It’s not favouritism. It’s not that he can’t stand the thought of the detective dead, has never been able to stand it. It’s just sensible. Shuichi is a good ally for the others, good backup if Kokichi fails. It’s important he stays alive.

Kokichi summons his smirk back, pressing a finger to his lips- pulls a little darkness up to his eyes. “Well, I hope you serve me well.”

That’s all they can communicate before Miu swings between them, grabbing Kokichi by the shoulders and scuffing up his hair, and the others around them laugh and clamour to speak over each other. 

“What are you all doing?” Kokichi asks, once he’s weaseled out of yet another of Miu’s headlocks (she’s getting pretty predictable.) 

“Investigating!” Akamatsu says, a spark in her eyes, all false confidence. She pulls it off well, though, even if anyone with half a brain could spot the tremor in her lower lip. Good thing they’re surrounded by idiots. “We think all the others are here, too, but- Kuse, Tsuji, Aya-chan, I never thought I’d run into you here! What on earth is going on?”

Internally, Kokichi takes a moment to scream. How the fuck does Akamatsu know these losers???

Shuichi, still standing next to him, leans down to murmur in his ear. “Kaede and Amami have been communicating with survivors of Danganronpa who are willing to speak out against the company. I think those three- and the others, over there-” he jerks his head in the direction of the people Kokichi didn’t recognize, his voice barely more than a breath, “were some of the more vocal survivors.” His eyes flick down to meet Kokichi’s, and it’s clear he’s not just sharing a piece of casual information. Kokichi looks back at him, holds the gaze for a moment, then nods. 

Tsuji adjusts the straps of their mask, looking no more warmly at Akamatsu than they had at Kokichi. “Well, I was at home when I… I assume I was subject to general anesthesia, from Kuse and Aya’s stories. I woke up in the same room as Aya- which is not what happened in our initial game, for the record, but I assume we were grouped together because we were from the same season. Kuse woke up separately, correct?” They get a nod in response.

Shuichi frowns, glancing over to Kokichi. “Did you wake up on your own, too?”

He grins, folding his arms behind his head, very aware of all the people with eyes on him. “Yup! And I waited very patiently for my beloved servants to pick me up- and they did!” He gestures over at the unimpressed group of strangers.

The detective nods, pressing a hand to his mouth thoughtfully. “I woke up with Kaede. It seems that most of us, so far at least… woke up according to our positions in the first game.” 

_Ah._ Kokichi had noted that, he just didn’t know it applied to all of them. He nods, smiling, and says, “then I guess there’s probably more of us to find, huh? Looks like we’re all going to be here.” Except Kiibo. Kokichi woke up alone. That pangs, somewhere in his chest he keeps tucked away, but there’s no time to think about it. It’s just Kiibo. He wasn’t even real. 

“Kokichi!” Miu says suddenly, grabbing his arm. “Come meet the newbies.” She drags him away from Shuichi’s not-at-all comforting presence, and deposits him in front of two strange women, one all ringlets and cuffed sleeves and buttons everywhere, and the other all soft sweaters and hairclips. “This is Oshiro-” she gestures to the woman with the ringlets, who must be at least in her mid twenties- “and Miya!”

“Greetings,” Oshiro says, her voice lilting and pleasant. “I was the ultimate composer in the fourty-sixth season. 

“Oh, I was- I was the ultimate sculptor in mine. Season fourty seven, just after her.” Miya's voice, on the other hand, is somewhere between floaty and droning, like she's not quite present.

Kokichi raises an eyebrow. "How's it feel to have Yonaga take over your whole biz?"

"I don't mind, really," Miya says, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug, still staring a little dreamily. "It's not as if either of us worked for it, you know? I don't really sculpt anymore, anyway."

Huh. All the people in their class still practice their talents, at least in some way. Kokichi wonders that if the next... five, six years will see them drained of passion. If they'll end up like these faux-ultimates, burned out and bruised under the eyes. 

Fortunately, he doesn't have much time to ponder that concerning yet extremely likely possibility, because then Akamatsu announces that they've got more rooms to look at, and Kokichi takes the opportunity to abandon all these strange characters and glue himself to Shuichi's side again. They keep to the back, letting Akamatsu direct them from classroom to corridor to classroom, Shuichi staring around them, picking up objects and checking out the scenery. Kokichi, on the other hand, watches these strangers he doesn't trust, assesses their chances of snapping- or of being dark enough to drag them all here. 

They inspect the basement, the library, and find a hidden door behind the bookshelves- but Shuichi looks over it, and announces that the keypad looks fake and that knocking on the back of it doesn't feel hollow. He still covers it in dust, anyway, but it's clear from his expression that he thinks it's just another part of this unnatural replica. The rooms don't line up quite right, like someone's taken the structure of this building and shoved it into a shape of the school for gifted juveniles. Things are just a little off, the way the plantlife grows, the metal covering the basement, the angle of the rooms and the hallways, the placement of the overbearing monitors- in a way that you'd never notice if you hadn't been forced to live your worst nightmares in this school, hadn't been forced to survey every inch of it as you looked for an escape.  
This search is equally fruitless, of course, save for Akamatsu's voice starting to shake when they stepped into the library. Miu has to guide her out while the rest of them search, and when they regroup, she still seems shaken. 

Kokichi wonders if they have a hangar waiting in here, and grits his teeth.

They sweep the first floor again, and pretty quickly come to the conclusion that the 'basement' area is the actual ground floor of this building, and the floor above it is really the second. It just serves to make Kokichi more irritated, this shitty, fucked up prison that they couldn't even get right. It makes it worse, somehow, that it doesn't match up to his memories. Maybe because he knows that it's not a hallucination because of that. At least his mind is accurate.   
They continue up the stairs, sweeping the halls, and they reach the third floor, and Kokichi wants to follow up the mysterious extra pair of stairs that apparently leads to the dorms- but his dreams are shortlived, because the sound of absolute chaos suddenly ripples down the hall and the entire group is running toward it before he can even make a cutting remark.

Kokichi lets the others run on ahead, because he has a fairly aloof persona to keep up, even if every part of him is burning to know what’s going on. He’ll find out. He’ll know, soon.  
The sound of more voices join the frantic shouting, and even Tsuji jogs on ahead. Kokichi waits until everyone’s blocking the doorway to slip in between them- and if he were a less well-trained man, he would have joined the screaming.

In this room, a marvellous recreation of one of the corridors in Danganronpa’s killing game set, the rest of their missing classmates stand around- notably, Shinguji and Hoshi huddled by a window, Chabashira and Tojo trying to control the chaos, and the rest of them yelping and pointing, trying to speak over each other. That’s not the really interesting thing in this room, though.  
No, that would be the whole grown man trying to choke out a teenager. And normally that would be pretty shit, if that teenager didn’t happen to be one Shirogane Tsumugi. 

"What the fuck," Oshiro the composer says, her musical voice suddenly flat.

The man with Shirogane in a headlock looks up, and immediately brightens. "Wow! Oshiro, I haven't seen you since the last meet up- how are you doing?"

"Peachy," she grits out. "Nakai, what is going on?"

The man looks down to the girl in his arms, and his eyes light like he'd forgotten about her, even with the way she's digging her nails into his arm. Quickly, he releases her, and then, for safety, slams her to the ground and pins her in place. "Taking her hostage!" He declares. "Danganronpa won't do anything to us if I've got their mastermind!"

"I already told you," Shirogane spits, the venom in her voice genuinely disturbing. "Danganronpa didn't do this!"

"Your lies won't help you now, villain!" The man tells her. Then he looks up, right at Kokichi, and grins. "No offense."

"None... taken," Kokichi says, looking over the entirety of this bizarre scene. "Shirogane, what are you playing at? This seems pretty stupid, even for you." He crosses his arms, smirks, lets the sick pleasure he gets from mocking her show on his face. This just confirms it for him, her presence here. This is all Danganronpa, and they're mocking them, laughing at them, belittling their pain. God, he is going to choke her out, if he gets his hands on her. He's going to drag their fucking company into the ground. How dare they. How dare they even try to pull something like this-

Her face twists as she looks at him, and she starts scrabbling, trying to drag herself out from the man's bizzare hold on her. "You're all crazy! You're just my characters! You're nothing without Danganronpa!"

"Wow," Tsuji says, crossing their arms. "You've changed, Shirogane. And you haven't even gone through a personality adjuster."

"If Danganronpa had nothing to do with this," Shuichi says, slowly, like he's only just found his voice- a bit shaky, nervous, but determined. "Then why are we all here? The survivors who have been most outspoken about Danganronpa's treatment, the people who ended its last season? Why us? It seems a little too specific to be just random selection."

"Then why would I be here, dumbass?" Shirogane hisses, stabbing a fist in the air. The sleeve of her shirt falls back, revealing a cool metal bracelet around her wrist- one that matches the one Kokichi found when he first woke up. Several people inhale, and he looks sideways to find a few classmates grabbing their wrists, eyes wide. Shirogane stares at them all with an air of superiority, a smugness that is _really_ tempting to kick out of her.  
The room goes quiet for a moment. She laughs. 

"Well," Akamatsu says, quietly. "We obviously aren't going to trust anything you say. But, I suppose-" she glances over to the man, still pinning Shirogane down, and her nose wrinkles. "Um, sir, do you think-"

"Nakai Taiyo!" The man says, jumping to his feet- while still keeping his upper body pressed to Shirogane. He gives a swift salute, then tightens his grip on her. "As both the ultimate stuntsman and the oldest person here, I feel it's my duty to protect all of you! So just let me know what you need, alright?" He gives a winning, and completely stupid, smile. 

Akamatsu smiles back, clearly charmed. "W-well, Nakai-san, do you think you could hold Shirogane in place for us? I think we should investigate a bit more of the school, but I wouldn't want-"

"Oh, of course!" He says, jumping upright and hauling Shirogane with him. "Don't worry, I'm here to support you in any way you need!"

That seems to be enough to dissolve some of the tension, as people rush over to greet each other and make sure they're all okay. Despite doing the same thing less than an hour ago, Kokichi scoffs at them- although he can't help a quick doublecheck that Gonta's holding up alright. Just in case.  
God, he really has grown all sappy, hasn't he?

Seson 52's Aya runs over to Amami, her eyes all alight. “Amami-kun! Gosh, it’s been so long since I last saw you, how are you doing? I’m sorry you died so quickly the next game, I was really worried about you but at least it was fast I guess? And as I’m saying this I’m only just realizing that you don’t remember me.”

“Sorry,” Amami says, sounding more awkward than Kokichi has ever heard him. He didn’t even know the guy was capable of shyness until now. “I- I do watch the season, sometimes, so I recognize you and everything. You’re Aya-chan, right? We were friends.”

“We were!” She says, beaming, seemingly oblivious to Amami’s sky-high levels of discomfort. “Oh, that makes me so happy to hear.”

He laughs awkwardly, clearly looking about for help. Lovely Akamatsu comes to his rescue, talking about potential plans for escape. Kokichi watches them all chat, complacent and cheerful, and he looks sideways to see how Shuichi's jaw is set, his brow furrowed, how he's clearly deep in thought. It's more comforting than any hokey speech Momota can offer or empty friendship Akamatsu can promise- seeing Shuichi at work, seeing him take it all seriously. 

A familiar jingle plays, and Kokichi's chest clenches. All of them fall silent, cheerful conversation long forgotten, and turn to stare at the monitor hanging in the room. They've passed so many monitors that they'd just started seeming like part of the scenery, just another imitation aspect to this prison. But this one- this one flickers on, static fading out to reveal a still image of a Monokuma doll.

Its giggle echoes out, uncanny, not quite there. Something a little tinny to its speech in a way that never was before. "All students are required to gather in the school gymnasium," it chirps, like someone speaking into a voice changer. Spiders run down Kokichi's spine. His skin feels itchy, restless, suddenly. He's got to get out of here.

"The gym wasn't open," Miu says, quietly.

Akamatsu takes a breath. "No," she says. "It wasn't."

So, twenty-one students ranging from 17-28 years fucking old waltz down to to the second- first- whatever floor it is, really. They make no conversation, like they're all marching to yet another of those godawful trials.  
When Akamatsu pushes open the door, it opens easily. They file into the building, staring around it, at each other, and as the anxiety builds, people start murmuring, fidgeting, pulling at their clothes. 

The monitor hanging over the bleachers flickers to life. Kokichi takes a moment to stare at the security cameras hanging around them, wonders if there are any others hidden around. Wonders if any of this is even real. (God, he hopes it's not.) They group together, nervous, antsy, untrusting. Shuichi's presence at his side is as terrifying as it is comforting, but Kokichi can't help his gaze from flicking back, can't help but keep double-checking that he's still there.

"Puhuhuhu!" A poor imitation of their headmaster's giggle echoes around the room. Everyone tenses. "Welcome back, students! Think of this as your graduation ceremony. Don't worry! We know there's an awful lot of you, but we have a lot of prizes to hand out."

"What do you want?" Stuntman Nakai demands, dragging Shirogane forward as he shakes his fist at the screen. Fake-Monokuma just giggles again.

"What do we want?" It asks, and Kokichi swears he can hear the echo of other voices around it. "What do we want? We want to see you suffer. We want to see you beg for forgiveness. We want to see you die. But more than that- we want to see you succeed! See the right path! The light of the world! We want to see you _graduate."_

Everyone knows. Everyone knows what it means. Everyone knows what they want.

Akamatsu steps up, her voice shaking. "You won't get what you want. You're sick. None of us- none of us will do anything like that."

"Eh? But you've done it before." It's _so_ gross, so gross the way its voice is pitched just a little wrong, the way it's clearly a human speaking behind that stock-image on the monitor. The fact that _this_ is where the budget got cut. "Rules are simple! You kill someone, we hold a class trial. You get away with murder, we let you go free and punish the rest. You fail, and we punish only you. Sound fun?"

Akamatsu balls her hands into fists. She opens her mouth, but the only thing to come out is slightly choked stammers. They all stand in silence, then- Harukawa lunges for Shirogane, ignoring the shouts around her, dragging her away from Nakai's hold. "You did this!" She spits. "You and your fucking- your fucking evil, awful company, you did this to us-"

"Ahem," the Monokuma on-screen says, its voice still slightly off- none of that self-assured, overconfident calm of the real thing- just a little too angry too fast, a little too invested. "We would never work with someone like her." Its voice starts shaking as it continues, barely repressed rage. "Not with someone who worked with you. As far as we're concerned, we want nothing more for you to tear each other's little heads off! _Especially_ hers." The voice drops a little, some unnatural growl in there, something too human and not robot leaking through. It makes his skin crawl.

Harukawa glares at Shirogane but doesn't let go, digging her nails into the back of her shirt. Shirogane smiles back at her.

"Don't you care about your own employees?" Amami asks, his tone dark. The not-quite classic giggle wraps around them again.

"Why, I'm perfectly flattered that you think Danganronpa would go this far! But no, we aren't associated with the company in any... official way. Think of us as fans."

"Oh my god," Aya says, sounding like she might be sick. They all know the stories about Danganronpa fans, and what they do to past contestants. They've just never considered it might be _them._

Kokichi feels a little numb as the Monokuma on-screen continues. "Now, the rules are expanded on in the computer in your dorms, in case they've slipped your minds. I'm sure you all know, but no tampering with school electronics, right? No contacting the outside world." No building phones, Kokichi thinks, satisfaction low in his stomach as he glances over at Miu, who gives him a small, faked but meaningful grin in response. They're still scared of them. They're still worried that they'll get out. They will. "As long as you all follow the rules and play nicely, you should make a whole lot of wonderful memories in your last days of high school!"

"How do you plan to execute us?" Tsuji asks, their voice dry. 

"And on the subject of memories," Not-Monokuma continues, their voice dipping down, growing salacious, salivating, desperate as the pant of a dog. "If you look at your left wrist, you might find that we've prepared a little gift for you all."

At once, everyone lifts their wrist, pulls their shirts and coats and jackets back. Kokichi does, too, staring down at the innocent little bangle on his wrist. 

"Those are your specially-provided Monokuma bangles!" The bear chirps. "An old motive, from way back, but we thought they were fitting! And also a convenient way to deal with executions, considering the... situation." Its voice goes smug, too satisfied, and god, Kokichi hates whoever's behind this more than he's hated anyone. "Those bangles contain a high, instant-acting, very painful poison! That poison will kick in at any point that one of you is executed through trial, or... if you complete your forbidden action."

"What the fuck is a forbidden action?" Miu shouts up at the screen, her face flushed with anger. 

Whoever's sitting behind that picture of Monokuma clicks their tongue, the sound pitched-up. "Patience, students. I'll get there. Your forbidden action, is simply, an action that will be displayed on your bracelet in the next... hm, they should show up just after I finish this broadcast! Anyway, your forbidden action is the one thing you cannot do, under any circumstances. Completing your forbidden action will result in your immediate execution. Also, killing someone by triggering their forbidden action will not count you as a blackened, so only do it if you're into killing for fun!"

Kokichi stares at the unassuming metal around his wrist as their captor keeps talking, going over a bunch of rules that they already know, running down the facilities they've already investigated. A million things run through his head- that there's no poison in these bangles, that it's all a bluff, that he doesn't want to test it. That his action could be something like walking, or breathing, something that kills him no matter what. 

All twenty-one of them all watch as the screen shuts off, leaving the auditorium painfully empty. Momota gently touches Harukawa’s shoulder, murmurs something to her, and after a moment, she drops Shirogane onto the floor and steps back, turning into his arms.

Several beeps emit across the room. In unison, everyone lifts their hands, painfully nervous. Kokichi glances at Shuichi, who gives him a reassuring smile. 

He takes a breath. Tells himself he's not scared of a bunch of insane fans. Rolls up the sleeve of his jacket. Turns his wrist over.

_Must not tell the truth._

Immediately, his stomach drops, and, from the sounds of horror and- and _despair_ coming from around him, he’s not the only one with a targeted insult blinking on his arm. Fuck them. Fuck them all, this is so- so reductive, so bullshit, so- like they think they can just paint his character over like it's nothing, like this is all he is.

Must not tell the truth. It’s so mocking. You thought we’d stop you from lying? No, sorry, we’re going to _ruin_ that defense mechanism instead of just taking it away. We’re going to ruin the whole point of lying, we’re going to make you predictable, boring, because you’re Ouma Kokichi, and we want you to be the Ouma Kokichi you were written to be. Just a liar, a liar, nothing more than a filthy liar, almost smart enough to beat us but never enough, just a fucking liar-

“Okay, guys,” Akamatsu begins to say, because she’s always been the one to take charge- back in the first killing game and even after, as soon as anyone woke up, and when Shuichi was distracted with writing up cases and testimonies and legal scripture to prevent Danganronpa from even trying to return. “I think it would be best if we all shared our-”

“No!” Shuichi’s voice cuts through the air, and Kokichi turns to him, genuinely surprised. Next to him, the detective looks away, hastily tucking his wrist back into his shirt sleeve. Kokichi's eyes linger there for a moment, curious. "No, there’s a possibility….” He hesitates, then continues. “I don't think anyone here is a killer. But there’s a possibility that they could be used against us. I just- I don’t think we should share them as a group. It could be very easy- it’s too easy. Especially for people who have codes that… rely on others”

Akamatsu lets out a sound of protest. Kokichi just stares, as Shuichi meets her eyes, his gaze stony and fierce, his chin lifted, her, defensive, protective, who can’t understand why he’s doing this. “None of us would do something like that,” she spits. “I can’t believe-”

“He may have a point,” Harukawa interrupts, staring over at Shirogane. Even Momota, standing next to her, doesn’t speak up in defense of their group’s unity, his hands clenched. 

“What? Noooo, Akamatsu is so clearly right, let’s all share our secret ways of killing us for everyone to see!” Kokichi's voice comes out like it belongs to someone else, floaty and shrill and cruel. Harukawa casts a glare at him that he only giggles at. This can't be happening. Is this really happening? Is he reduced to sarcasm and petty lies?

“Are you serious?” Miu hisses, crossing her arms. “Are you really going to behave like that? Now? No one thinks you’re evil, so don’t even try-”

“Let’s all calm down,” Amami says, his voice as soothing as ever, as he steps to the center. “Guys, it’s okay. I’m sure it’s fine to tell each other individually, but maybe we shouldn’t share them as a group, okay? Let’s all take a minute to calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down? Bitch, there is nothing to BE calm about, we are so fucked, we-”

Kokichi tunes them all out, turning to look at the detective next to him. Shuichi looks back, and his eyes are just- full and empty all at once, pained and apologetic and regretful.

Kokichi opens his mouth to speak, then realizes nothing he can say will be comforting, because Shuichi is never comforted by lies. He grits his teeth, and eventually gets out "It'll be fine, I'm sure." A lie. If he makes it sound too convincing, will that kill him? How do they know when he's lying? Are they timing his heart? He's a pathological liar, surely they know that's stupid. Surely they know that. Surely they’re not going to put his life in the hands of a lie detector.

Shuichi reaches over amidst all this internal panic and takes Kokichi's arm in his hands. Kokichi watches, silently, as Shuichi rolls down his sleeve again, pulls the hem of the jacket down until it completely covers his wrist, then his palm. He never looks away from Kokichi's face as he covers up the code that might kill him.

"Just to be safe," Shuichi murmurs. And then, "I trust you, Kokichi. I'm not going to stop trusting you just because we ended up here."

Huh. He hadn't even realized he was worried about that before Shuichi told him. Kokichi lets his eyes slide away again, the honesty on Shuichi's face too much to see. He opens his mouth, and then pauses again. When did he get so used to telling Shuichi the truth? When did his lies start feeling less necessary, more compulsive, an addition to a story, something to slip out mid-conversation? When-

"It's okay," Shuichi says quietly, slipping down to grab his hand, just briefly, a brush of reassurance that feels weirdly familiar. "You don't have to tell me everything, or- I know this is probably hard. We'll get through it, though."

Kokichi's throat is all tight. He nods, briefly. "Well, detective, I hope you leave me alone for this whole thing. I'm already sick of you." He looks away, checks his nails, tries to inject new tells into this lie, because if Shuichi leaves him alone, he doesn't know what-

Shuichi just blinks, then gives a soft laugh. "We'll bring it down together this time, okay?" His fringe slips into his eyes when his shoulders shake. His eyes are nervous, shifting, his mouth twisted up, just a bit. He's afraid. He's scared but he's not lying. 

Kokichi nods, and resolves to keep close to Shuichi's side. The others dissolve around them, still yelling, chaos on chaos, Akamatsu pleading with them for quiet, the strangers huddled together, Amami gesturing wildly as he tries to draw them in, and Kokichi wraps his arms around Shuichi's arm and sings out childishly as they all fall apart.

Amongst all the shouting, Shirogane remains deathly silent.

\--

It takes a while, but Shuichi and Kaede manage to establish some order. They calm people down, remind them of how people are definitely looking for them, and begin introductions. They make a list of all the ultimates and their seasons, allegedly to look for any other possible motive in bringing them all together, but really just to keep track of them.

 _Ultimate matchmaker- Yoshida Ayako - Season 52 (n)_ _  
__Ultimate paramedic- Tsuji Michi -Season 52 (f)_ _  
__Ultimate sculptor- Miya Fumiko - Season 47 (f)_ _  
__Ultimate herbalist - Kuse Satoshi - Season 50 (m)_ _  
__Ultimate stuntman - Nakai Taiyo- Season 42 (m)_ _  
__Ultimate composer- Oshiro Hideko- Season 46 (f)_

Then, they put themselves into groups, which forms pretty naturally- people flocking to the ones they trust most, Himiko and her girls, Tojo and Amami and Kaede, Hoshi and Gonta and Shinguji, several other people floating toward Kaede, Maki and Kaito. Shuichi and Kokichi. Shuichi quietly suggests that the students from other seasons can stick with Amami and Kaede, who’ve probably had the most contact with them before, and who are also the… nicest, really, out of their mess of a class. Maki and Kaito take care of Shirogane, binding her hands behind her back with one of Maki’s hair ties- the assassin quickly pulling the rest of her hair into a sensible bun. Shirogane just smiles, sweetly, at all of them, talking casually about how this is the power of her beloved show, the power to inspire such great despair- at least, until Maki threatens to kick her teeth in. She shuts up at that point, but continues smiling. Then, Kaede instructs everyone to investigate.

Kokichi sticks by Shuichi’s side the whole time, offering cutting remarks and jokes, kicking him in the ankle to let him know about something he’s noticed. They start off with Maki and Kaito, but split up after a while to cover the dorms in one sweep. 

The place they are stored is a… one-building, four story recreation of the Danganronpa killing game set. The dorms are set on the fourth floor, and there’s no extra amenities, no talent labs, just the one building. It’s a decent recreation, but clearly didn’t have the budget to get everything exactly right. That’s not to say the budget is minimal.

“I think we should prepare for the fact that we’ll need to get out on our own,” Shuichi murmurs, dusting his fingers over the windowsill in the room with his face on the door. “There’s a lot of confidence here, and definitely some money involved.”

“I think Danganronpa did it.” Kokichi’s voice comes out drawling, lazy, uninterested. Shuichi frowns at him.

“No, I think that’s too stupid a move for them to pull. Plus, if they had, they wouldn’t have half-assed it like this.” He gestures to decorations in the room- still in the same color palette of the dorms, but not matching the game. An unwary viewer might not have noticed a difference like that, but Shuichi lived in this building. Shuichi’s nightmares are full of an exact shade of grey, and it’s not here.  
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make his skin crawl, though. Shuichi shakes his head, abandoning the wired, barred up windows and moving over to join Kokichi, who loiters by the door. “Shall we go?”

Kokichi doesn’t move, frowning. After a few moments, as if he were deciding on the right words, he says, “Oh, I was just not thinking about your deductions. You couldn’t have been any more vague, really. People will definitely be able to rescue us. It’s stupid to think we’ll have to get out on our own.”

Shuichi stares back at him, where he’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed. A few things click as he thinks over the dialogue again. “I think… I think something like this was clearly well-planned. And I think the people behind it have money. And I think they are… very confident we’ll be here for a while. That confidence should be taken with caution.”

“You’re very certain about all that.”

Shuichi laughs, sheepish, nervous. He ducks his head away, has the sudden urge to pull at the brim of a cap. He’s not the same person who woke up in that first killing game, all that time ago. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m just being cautious. You never know who might be lying, right?”

Kokichi’s mouth twitches up in something like a grin, small and sly. He slips through the open door, first his head, then his shoulders, rolling through it like a wave. “You never learn, detective.”

Shuichi follows him out, and the two of them spend a while just walking, looking around, never sure how much to say aloud, how many cameras are fixed on them. How much of this is real. It certainly feels more real, compared to the simulation- the lower budget, the shitty furniture, the small size of the rooms, the uncanny just-off imitation of it all… it feels like something that fits in reality. It feels like, maybe, you could walk through here and think about how it was a decent recreation. Like real people might have actually put work into making this.  
It’s gross to think about. Shuichi makes a last sweep of the dorms before walking over to the Obviously Placed computer he’s been ignoring, ready for it to… explode, or show his own death, or something. Kokichi runs off ahead of him, clearly eager to get his hands on the keyboard and processor. The second he brushes his hands over the mouse, the screen flickers on, a bright pink warning displayed in the exact same color of fake blood.  
 _Welcome, user!_ _  
__RULES:_ _  
__1) This device must not be dismantled or harmed in any way. If it is moved too violently, or has any component removed, it will self-destruct._ _  
__2) No edits to the software of this device must be made. No changes to the programming or restrictions are to be made, or it will self-destruct._ _  
__3) No attempts to link this device to the internet will be successful, but if they’re even attempted it will self-destruct._

“I guess we should have Iruma-san take a look at this,” Shuichi murmurs, clicking the big ‘OK’ button in the lower corner of the screen. It takes him to a new layout that looks… ugh, just grossly like the Monopads. He skims through the less important menus and opens up the rules, which, fortunately, seem to all be the standard ‘kill someone and this is how class trials work’. No weird pool rules that might get someone killed out of ignorance.

Shuichi stares at the computer for a moment, with its flashing screen. He frowns. “Kokichi,” he says, slowly. “When you woke up, did you check the other lockers at all?”

Kokichi scoffs, fussing with his hair. “Of course, Shuichi, my top priority was checking out the other creepy metal boxes.”

Shuichi nods, standing up, still staring at the glinting screen. “There’s something I’d like to check, if you wouldn’t mind?”

The liar shrugs, hopping off the side of the desk. “Got nothing better to do.” Despite his not-very-encouraging statement, he still sticks to Shuichi’s side, follows him down the stairs. Shuichi counts the floors, four, three, two- what would have been the ground floor in the simulation. He retraces the same path he had a long time ago, walking down the long, mocking hallways. The school twists and turns, but he knows it almost by heart, thudding in his chest as he crosses down to the hallway that led him to Kokichi, all that time ago. He can’t help glancing behind him as they approach it, Orpheus needing a reassurance that will only doom him.

Kokichi stands there, irreverent, lovely, the straps of his uniform tailing behind him like kite strings. He folds his hands behind his head as they stop at the door, raises an eyebrow. “Something on my face.” Not a question, but he lifts an eyebrow.

Shuichi shakes his head and looks away again, pushing the door open. “Just thinking, he says, as he walks into the room- empty, without the sound of arguing, a small boy all in white chasing a robot around the room. His heart pangs, for just a moment, but he walks over to the lockers and, methodically, begins opening them. Kokichi watches, absent of all his usual banter, as Shuichi opens one, then another, then the next, until he opens the third from the left and finds a laptop. 

Hands shaking, he retrieves it, pulls out a cable, too. Kokichi moves to hover over his shoulder, and wordlessly takes the cord when it’s offered. Kokichi plugs in the laptop to a charging point on the wall, and Shuichi presses the power button and pretends his hands aren’t shaking.

The laptop boots up, lights scattering over the keyboard. Text floats over the screen, green, block-lettered, cliche.

A L T E R E G O , it professes, and a bar fits on the screen, fills with more neon color, until finally, finally, it finishes loading, and Shuichi and Kokichi stare as two eyes blink onto the screen, then black lines drip from those eyes-- and then white skin, the curve of a face, a fluffed fringe, blue eyes, and- and-

K1-B0 blinks, twice, and then gasps. “S-Saihara-kun?” The robot stammers. “Ouma? What- what is going on?”

“Kiibo!” They chorus, and Shuichi is far too close to hugging a computer. It’s been so long, but Kiibo’s face looks just the same, down to the little smile, the heavy fringe, the almost cat-like way he squints up at them. Shuichi, despite everything, finds himself breaking into a smile. “Kiibo, it’s so good to see you again.”

“A-and you as well, but I- I thought I was… gone? I thought-” Kiibo pauses, visibly processing, and his eyes flit about wildly. “Where is my body?”

“Well,” Kokichi drawls, but for all his convincing lies, the small quirk of his mouth is hard to miss. “I would have thought a robot had no concept for that kind of thing.”

Kiibo splutters, his face turning red. “You know what, Ouma, I was so pleased to see that you were alive that I thought I might be in heaven, but your persistent robophobia only confirms for me that we are still very much on earth.” He pauses, those blue orbs flicking over to Shuichi. “Right?”

“Right,” Shuichi confirms, and god, he hadn’t- he’d known he missed Kiibo, missed him so much it was hard to even think about him, but it’s really hitting him now. He can feel tears beading in his eyes and he- He ducks his head, squeezes his eyes shut. “Kiibo, there’s so much to tell you. What’s the last thing you remember.”

Kiibo frowns. “The- the confrontation, with Tsu- with the mastermind.” He closes his eyes. “Hold on a moment, I’m going to try and access the files stored on this device.” And before they can protest, he fades away, and a rush of panic bites at Shuichi’s chest, before his face reappears, still frowning. “Well, now I’m more confused. There’s just a bunch of information about some other killing game- I could only access the first section, but it looks as if the rest is set to be revealed over the course of a week.”

“That sounds about right,” Shuichi murmurs, his mind racing. Why does one week seem to be the main time limit? What happens at the end of it? 

“Shuichi, what… what’s going on?” Kiibo asks, and his voice suddenly sounds very small. “Why is Ouma there?”

“I’m dead,” Kokichi tells him, pulling a face. “I’m here to lead you to hell!”

“He’s lying, Kiibo,” Shuichi reassures the anxious robot, biting his lip. “It’s… Kiibo, it was all a simulation. The game. We were told your files had been deleted. You’re… you’re real, don’t worry, but you don’t have a body. You’re an AI.”

Kiibo stares, the gears in his metaphorical brain whirring away. “So… everyone is alive?” The hope in his voice is so real that it almost hurts.

Shuichi nods, his throat tight. “It’s been almost a year. Everyone is fine. But- but we’ve been dragged into another game, Kiibo.” He has to shut his eyes for a moment, fight back a wave of fear- all the uncontrollable elements, the things to worry about. What will the others do- how will he tell Kaede-

“A year,” Kiibo murmurs, sounding distant. It must be hard, to have such a huge gap in your memory. To die, and then wake up to your friends telling you it was all false.  
But Kiibo is Kiibo, and after only a moment, he looks back up at them, determined and hopeful. “Well, Saihara-kun, Ouma-kun, not to worry! Because I am sure we can all get out of this together, particularly if we all still have our memories. I’ll crack through these files in no time, and then we’ll all be out together. And we can be friends!”

“We are friends, Kiibo,” Shuichi murmurs. “Of course we are.”

“Of course!” The robot repeats, but his face has gone a little flushed, even when it’s just made of code.

Shuichi laughs softly, ducks his head. “We should get you to the others,” he says. “They’ll be delighted to see you.”

“Right, because Kiibo definitely has enough charge to do that,” Kokichi points out, flicking a finger at the battery symbol at the bottom of the screen. Shuichi winces, sheepishly. 

“Right, sorry,” he says. Kiibo’s excitement deflates.

Kokichi rolls his eyes, stands up and crosses his arms. “I guess the only option is for me to bring them down here.”

Shuichi bites his lip. A part of him is reluctant to let Kokichi go on his own, but he reminds it that Kokichi is a very capable person- that up until his death, Shuichi had always been a little scared of him. It’s not as reassuring as it should be, especially not with the bracelets around their wrists blinking away. But he nods, and he gives Kokichi a smile. “Thank you. Be- be careful, okay?”

Kokichi grins. “Shumai,” he says, “I’m always careful.” And then he disappears through the door like he’d never been there to begin with. Shuichi fights back a shiver, and turns back to his robot.

“Kiibo,” he asks, “do you remember anything else about Danganronpa?”

Curfew comes, and Shuichi holes up in his dorm room with Kokichi after sending his friends an apologetic stare. He really wanted them to stick with Kaito and Maki, but he knew Kokichi would never feel safe like that, so they were alone here, Kokichi nervously triple bolting the door, shoving a chair up against it, then another, then stalking over to the bed and setting himself right up against Shuichi’s side. 

Shuichi wraps an arm around him, automatically. It’s a gesture he would have panicked over only a few days ago (is it too much? Am I making him uncomfortable? Does he really like me or am I just there, are my feelings too heavy, my care too burdensome, do I make him uncomfortable when I try to find his truth?), but it comes as easily as breathing to him now. It’s stupid to worry about that. Dating, will-they wont-they, Kokichi’s trust issues, Shuichi’s guilt. Not when everything outside their door feels so dangerous, not when Kokichi leans into him just as easily, like it’s no big deal.

It’s funny, how natural it is to fall back into this sense of paranoia. He thought he was getting over it, he really was. Therapy and medication and group baseball games and the support of an entire charity do wonders for that. He thought he’d escaped Danganronpa. He’d thought that they were on an even playing field, now. Shuichi thought… he really thought they were safe. He’d thought they would be able to heal. How fucking stupid is he, for thinking he could get away like that, with any kind of victory? For thinking he could keep his friends safe?  
He’s back in it now, death all around him, waiting like it never left, its fingers spindly and burning cold. It feels too familiar. It feels too alien. 

“Feels like home,” Kokichi remarks, and he laughs, but it’s just a breath.

“You can’t tell the truth, can you?” He asks. 

Kokichi holds out his arm in response (the blinking _must not tell the truth_ on his bracelet) and Shuichi stares at it, and nods, and doesn’t offer his own in return. Kokichi doesn’t ask for it- maybe because a question is too honest, expressing his desire to know is too open. Or maybe he just knows that Shuichi would show him if he could. 

“I’m sorry,” Shuichi says, because he is. That’s an awful burden to carry- mocking and painful all at once. Kokichi’s communication skills are stripped, and he’ll be distrusted, marked. It’s a mockery of his progress, of how he’s been learning to be more open in himself. It’s also forcing him to show his hand, in a way. Part of Kokichi’s deception is never letting you know what’s a lie and what’s real. And now that’s been taken away, too.

Kokichi shrugs a shoulder, and grins. The bracelet doesn’t say his lies have to be convincing, but Shuichi doesn’t think he can lie without it sounding true. “I’m overjoyed, really. I-” And then he stops, like he wasn’t sure what he was about to say was a lie, or lie enough. If it was the sort of overly sarcastic lie he would tell to avoid his own feelings, while being true all the while. “I bet it’s fun for Shuichi, seeing through his nemesis like this.”

“Do you want to start making a plan?” Shuichi asks, eyeing him curiously. He is so panicked that he feels almost numb to it. The programmed instincts, the reaction to a challenge, to this setting he was designed for- they rear up in him, ready and waiting, soothed all this time with online investigations and case-building. But here they are eager, restless, ready to solve. He wonder if Kokichi’s feeling the same. 

Kokichi pauses, in a way that makes it evident (at least to Shuichi, staring at the slight scrunch of his nose, the way his eyes flick up and then glaze over) that he’s already got several plots he’s considering. But, eventually, he just shakes his head. “Yeah, I’d love to rush into something with limited information. Sounds just like me.”

“Point taken.” He can’t help admiring him, sick and twisted, staring at Ouma Kokichi who came so close to ending the game on his own, who helped prove to the viewers that Danganronpa was flawed to the core. Kokichi wasn’t written to win- probably not to get even as close to succeeding as he was. Kokichi, who outwitted all of them, who died for it.  
Shuichi hesitates, then reaches up to feather his fingers through the ends of his hair, where Kokichi twists his own hands into when he’s bored, or restless, or just thinking. Kokichi is his roommate, and his friend, and… maybe more than that, at least to him. He thinks of their flat, how the plants will go unwatered in their absence, how they left a pile of blankets on the couch, how the kitchen sink is stained with dye. He thinks about how empty, how unbearable it would be, if Kokichi never came home. Reckless, wild Kokichi, with death wrapped around his wrists, another thing he almost-triumphed over.  
“Don’t worry,” Shuichi says, his fingers tugging softly in that hair, the ends where it’s dyed violet (like their sink), where it sticks up like a duck’s tail. “We’ll keep each other safe. We can sleep in shifts, if it makes you feel better.”

“Useless. What do you think I am, scared?”

“I’ll go first,” Shuichi offers, holding his friend close. “You can sleep now, if you need to.”

Kokichi doesn’t respond, maybe struggling for a lie that doesn’t hold some truth to it, but he nods and leans his head on Shuichi’s shoulder. They’re so close. When was the last time they fell asleep apart from each other? The last time they went to bed that wasn’t on the couch in their living room, wasn’t wrapped up in a tangle of limbs, the last time he didn’t fall asleep with Kokichi’s even breath on his neck? Shuichi shuffles back, leans them down, pulls Kokichi with him. Kokichi keeps tucked close, and the fact that he’s willing to show this piece of vulnerability, this tiny crack in his mask… it means more than words. He doesn’t sleep, though, and that’s fine. Shuichi will wait. He can wait as long as needs.

Because under his coat, his bracelet flashes with its code, and after Kokichi is asleep Shuichi will wrap it in duct tape and tighten the buttons around his wrists and fall asleep still in his shirt because Kokichi _cannot_ see what it says, not when it would be so easy for him to die like this, with one misplaced word, with this uneasy, tender thing between them. Not when Kokichi only thinks of himself as martyr or villain, not when they’re trapped in this place reminding them of every sin they’ve committed, not he flew into Shuichi’s arms today and beamed, and the relief that had overtaken Shuichi had been like a dose of morphine to the dying, not when Shuichi had realized, standing in that stupid, over-decorated gym, as his bracelet flashed and he stared over at Kokichi, that he would do anything to keep Kokichi alive. He won’t fail him again. He won’t sit around for another pyrrhic victory. He won’t walk out of this hell with ghosts on his shoulders- even if it means he won’t walk out at all. And he’d do it for any of his friends, in a heartbeat, but with Kokichi- of course it’s Kokichi.  
He thinks about all those articles about them, about all the people who hate them, who are probably afraid of what they can achieve, working together. About how Kokichi, somehow, crept in until he was more than a ghost, more than a regret- until Kokichi, who was a mystery Shuichi never could grasp, ended up in his hands, human and whole. Kokichi, elusive and manipulative and downright cruel when he wanted to be, somehow ended up a friend. Ended up more than that. Shuichi would do anything for any of his friends, but he’s way beyond pretending Kokichi is just a friend. He’s been beyond it for a while, although he can’t put his finger on when, exactly. When they started falling asleep together? When their movie nights started becoming more important than work, than talking to his other friends? When they first moved in? When Kokichi dragged everyone together to talk it out? Right back when he showed Kokichi the phone he and Iruma had worked on together, and Kokichi had tugged on his shirt sleeve and looked so- so cute, and unreadable, and touched, all at once? Almost eleven months ago, Shuichi wakes up and he doesn’t see Kokichi until the next day, and things are weird and frosty and bitter and they still get along in an even weirder way. Six months ago, they broke out of the Danganronpa compound together. Three months ago, they moved in. Just this morning, they arrived to meet the others as a pair, Shuichi and Kokichi. 

Six hours ago, Saihara Shuichi looked at his wrist and resigned himself to failure. 

_Must not end the week with Ouma Kokichi still alive._

It pulses, under his coat sleeves. Neon lights in the night. A branding he won’t survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a scientist, but i am someone who spends a lot of time in and out of doctors appointments, and let me tell you this- the scene involving the gas is all dramatic license. While you probably *could* knock out a room of teenagers by pumping in ether/chloroform/some other increasingly expensive anesthetic, you’d need a lot of it, you’d need to be pretty direct, and you’d probably kill a few on the accident. It just felt like it fit better than having them be rushed by masked assailants.
> 
> Also a heads up: i havent watched danganronpa 3 (the anime)!! Im pulling the NG code shit off wikipedia and out of my ass, i’ve just been DESPERATE to write about the NG codes since i first heard of them.   
> I’ve been looking forward to this arc since i first started writing this fic - since before that, honestly! This was originally a separate idea but i tied the two together when i was planning out the overall plot, and AHH im so excited. And nervous. I hope this gets across the way I want it to. I hope this is interesting! Hhhh ive hyped it up so much in my head that i really am not sure if im able to carry it off like i hoped i could. So! Im sorry if its disappointing or a weird tone shift or anything… maybe im trying TOO hard? Dhhshdgshjk i hope its ok!! sorry!!!!
> 
> Also also, thank you to both roaringorange and platanosandprejudice on tumblr for some of the talent ideas! I wish i could have used more they were so much better than my dumb ideas shdsjhskjskslk


	11. so can we live?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reality is slipping around the edges. What is real, in a killing game? What can he trust?  
> “Kokichi?” Someone calls, and he knows who it is, he thinks, ah, oh no, as the door swings open once more.  
> Shuichi steps in. “You’ve be- oh my god.”  
> “I’m dead!” Kokichi stammers, whirling around. “I’m- don’t look at me, I’m dying!” He realizes after a second that he’s still waving the cleaver in the air, and quickly lowers his arm. “Also, I definitely killed that man!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some parts of this chapter i really like! some i hate. sorry. 
> 
> also, feel free to ignore this but: so? i've reached over 100k words on this, and that is... insane. That's utterly insane. i've had a lot of people ask me how i've written so much so quickly, and i've said stuff like 'quarantine' and 'hyperfixation' and 'i'm a genuine prophet but messages are oft confusing' but to be honest, that's all only a part of it. really, i owe it to all the support i've gotten- to your lovely comments, and your bookmarks, and your nice asks and messages. i honestly have never written this much of... anything, before, not even counting my other ousai stuff!!! it's crazy. it's wild to me that i have so many people interested in my writing and in my interpretation of these characters, i am just utterly.... blown away. this is the first fic i've ever written this much for- you've got the right to remain right here with me was the first fic i ever actually FINISHED.   
> you guys are amazing. thank you so much- all my motivation comes from you.

_He gives them his name, his age, his concept for a character. They have the rest of his life setting out on their desks, his woefully under reported medical history, the results of a psych profile he lied through. Exams, physical and mental, to help decide what kind of archetype he would fit into._ _  
__They always say to go into Danganronpa interviews ready to accept the fact that they might make you into anything- that your idea of a brilliant mastermind might be thrown aside for a lovable idiot when they see the results of your logical thinking tests. But he can’t imagine anything but being the ultimate leader- his ultimate leader, with his group of friends. He’s given them all names and personalities of their own, knows exactly what they did, why they were scouted. It’s a weird talent, but he hopes his ideas make it a little more convincing. He hopes they listen. Anything but this- but this character, this person. It’ll be a failure, worse than death, having strangers shape him into something more palatable._

_Still, it’s a risk worth taking. He’ll do anything to become the person he’s written out on his application forms, even if it means he has to risk being reduced to comedy in the process._

_“Why do you want to join Danganronpa?” They ask._

_The big question. The major one._

_Somewhere in this compound, in the rows of rooms with interviews taking place, plucky but tragic youth loitering outside, his best friend answers the same question. He probably goes into overly-enthusiastic detail about the deaths he would plan, the execution he would subject himself to. He probably talks about how the ultimate detective archetype is overdone- but how he could put a new spin on it. He probably pleads with them to let him die._

_In this room, the boy thinks about the question. He thinks about his life, how shitty and worthless it is. How only one person cares for him, and how they’re a few rooms away, just as willing to die. He thinks about how he’s bullied, relentlessly and cruelly, how he can’t trust his own mind, his own eyes. He thinks about how much his mother resents him, hates him, how much his father doesn’t care. How every day, he wakes up with more bruises, only some self-inflicted. The highlights of his week are getting drunk with his best friend and wishing he could kiss him. He thinks about how he’s smart but flunking out of school, about how he was considered a prodigy as a child but has grown into a dropout, druggie, failure. He thinks about how everyone who knows him hates him. He thinks about how much time he spends afraid, frightened, about how violence is more familiar than tenderness. How he loves his best friend selfishly, cruelly, hooking his claws in with panicked fervor._

_He doesn’t want to be the bullied character, the one who has a history of abuse, who is weak and shy and played for fanservice. He doesn’t want them to hear about how much he hates his life, about how desperate he is. He doesn’t want them to look at the plaster on his face and think he’s pathetic, think he’s wilting and shy and tragic. He’s more than that. He’s not just scared. He’s not just small and shy and nervous. He’s a fighter._

_He lifts his chin. “I love Danganronpa,” he says, his voice smooth, malicious, rich to his own ears. “And I love a bit of trouble. I think I could_ **_really_ ** _upset the usual narrative.” He plants his hands on his hips, tilts up his chin, pretends that he’s not afraid of anything. “I’m unpredictable, and I’m cruel when I want to be, and I’m smart. I mean, you can see my application, right? You know I’m smart. You need someone smart.”_

_That’s the only thing he has to offer, really- empty wit. “I’m great at reading people, but I’m also incredibly self-centered. I’m the type of person to withhold information until I think the time is right. I’m a creative thinker, too- I prioritize goals and don’t mind how I get there.”_

_He lifts his gaze to the camera recording, ignores the people sitting behind it. He lets his mouth curl into a smile he doesn’t think he’s ever made before. “It’s not that I want to join Danganronpa. It’s more that I think… Danganronpa wants me.”_

_He leaves the audition feeling even more empty than before. He meets up with his best friend, and there’s no conversation to be had- nothing to do but link their pinkies as they stand next to each other, covered by the bag at his hip._

\--

_Day two._

Shit is fucked! Shit is so fucked that it’s almost unbelievable! How is this real! 

Kokichi wakes up in Shuichi’s arms in the middle of the night, and for just a moment he thinks god, it’s gotten cold in here, and then he realizes that he’s not in the apartment almost instantly. The mattress under him feels hard, not the squishy fabric of their couch cushions, and the blankets around them are rough and unfamiliar.

Behind him, Shuichi shifts, running a hand down his arm. Kokichi has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment, because far from the comforting gesture it’s intended to be, he just feels cold all over.  
(Just a few nights ago, in their apartment, Kokichi was lying on the couch with Shuichi spooning him. Usually, he’s the clingy one with his limbs trapping the detective, weighing him down, but that day he’d woken up and found himself pressed down by Shuichi’s weight, his arms gentle around his stomach, comforting. Kokichi had blinked, looked up at where late-morning sun streamed through the curtains, and Shuichi had made a soft sound and hugged him closer. When Shuichi’s hand brushed over his arm, gentled him, he’d never felt safer.)

Kokichi rolls over, and finds the detective staring at him, tired but not asleep. “Hey,” he says, his voice a little rough, like he needs to wet his throat. 

“You didn’t wake me up for my shift,” Kokichi mumbles, struggling to stay conscious in a way he’s not really used to. In his memories with DICE, sleep is hard to find and easy to lose- one quiet disturbance and he’s awake, and his experience out of the simulation had supported that. But Shuichi- Shuichi. Argh. Kokichi’s frustrated just looking at him.

Maybe Shuichi’s getting better at reading him, or maybe Kokichi is just sleep-cranky in a bizarre way, but the detective laughs softly, even with the worry floating through his eyes. “You’ve only gotten about an hour of sleep,” he whispers. “It doesn’t count.” 

Kokichi blinks. Now that he thinks about it, that kind of tracks- they’d spent a long time just laying in silence, staring at the door, as the light faded. Now it’s so dark he struggles to make out the lines of Shuichi’s face, the movement of his pupils. “It counts if you’ve been awake all that time, dumbass.”

Shuichi shrugs, and then shifts, and the bed bounces and rolls as he reaches up and threads a hand through Kokichi’s hair. “Just go back to sleep,” he murmurs. “I’m not tired, really.”

And Kokichi, helpless, stupid, staring, can only shut his eyes and obey.

He wakes up again only a few hours later, and bullies Shuichi into getting a turn to sleep. Kokichi sits up in the dark of the room and stares out at the decorations around them, so similar and not-quite right. He thinks this hell might be worse than the first one.  
Alone in the dark, he pinches his cheek.  
It stings.

Shuichi wakes up, and neither of them are rested, but there’s not much point in trying to sleep anymore. They pull on their uniforms again, and Kokichi tries not to stare at the muscles in Shuichi’s back. He takes his time, rearranging the buttons and straps, and then he grabs a ballpoint off Shuichi and marches to the bathroom connected to the room (which has a sink and toilet but no shower, because those are stored on the second floor), where he proceeds to redraw his makeup. He puts in the triangles under his eyes, and is halfway through the incredibly painful process of trying to do his eyeliner, when Shuichi walks in. The detective laughs, quietly, then pulls out a blue and a red pen, and they sit down in the tiny bathroom and Shuichi’s clumsy hands draw on new shapes. It ends up looking a total mess, and Shuichi apologizes constantly, but Kokichi feels a little more at ease- he isn’t who they want him to be. He’s someone else. He makes Shuichi draw on his uniform, too, covers the white jacket with hearts and triangles and stars, teardrops and eyes. 

Shuichi pulls on his typical jacket and fusses with his hair. They’ve had two other copies of their uniform provided, and no further clothes. Kokichi cuts the sleeves off one of his jackets to make something of a t-shirt, something to sleep in. He notices, as they’re putting on their shoes, that under the edge of Shuichi’s sleeve, his Monokuma bangle has been covered in duct tape, like he’s afraid of someone seeing it accidentally.  
Huh. Kokichi assumes that if he were really that paranoid, he would have offered Kokichi some, so… thinking it over, he’s been pretty shifty about it. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had something like “must not let anyone know what this says.” Something cruel and tricky, designed to lose trust, make him vulnerable. Kokichi resolves to help him keep it covered- if it was important, Shuichi would tell him.

Besides, he can always tell when Shuichi’s lying. 

They go out. They look around. They walk in on Nakai and Kuse having an incredibly suggestive conversation about herbal treatments for muscle pains, that has Kokichi in stitches and Shuichi red down to his chest. They eat with the others. They look around some more. They find nothing. 

It’s just prison, really. That’s all it is.

\--

_Day three._

Shuichi’s tactic, regarding his potential mortality stamped on his wrist, is to ignore it. Sure, it’s not the best plan. But the way he sees it, there are three important factors:  
1) It’s a time limit. They might escape before then.  
2) His worry can be explained away by the situation, but there’s only so long before Kokichi will get suspicious. His best move is to avoid thinking about it, so he doesn’t show any signs of stress or weird behavior.  
3) Kokichi cannot know before Shuichi’s ready. That readiness might be… gone. Just to be safe.

Just to be safe, because knowing Kokichi, he might try something stupid and noble and foolhardy, and Shuichi refuses to- to threaten Kokichi with his own life. No, his plan is that on the seventh day, he’ll tell Kaito- or Kaede, and then he’ll get advice from there. 

That morning, Shuichi and Kokichi split up for the first time in a while, which makes him nervous, but Kokichi wanted to speak to Iruma and Shuichi wanted to find Kaede.

He finds her sitting on the floor of the game room, chatting with the odd group around her happily. It looks like- Kaede and Amami, with four of the previous contestants- Nakai, Oshiro, Miya, Aya. 

“What are you doing?” Shuichi asks. 

Kaede grins up at him, a little sheepishly, and beckons him over. “We’re talking about our past lives- who we were before and stuff. Wanna join in?”

Five other sets of eyes look at him hopefully. 

“Oh, ah.” He squats down by them uncomfortably. Tries to think of anything he knows about his past self- for an investigator, it’s concerningly little. “I, well. I was a big fan of Danganronpa.” He sometimes gets odd, intrusive thoughts around blood and violence- always disturbing but often present, to the point where he’s grown sickly used to them.

Amami snorts. “It’s really weird thinking that you guys saw my season. And then… decided you wanted that. It’s bizarre to me.”

Aya hums, shaking her head. “We all did it, Amami-kun, don’t be so critical.” The overly-familiar way she refers to him is clearly meant innocently, but it’s hard to miss the way Amami shuffles in discomfort.

“I was a real piece of shit!” Nakai says cheerfully. Shuichi spent a few minutes yesterday admiring his bright hair, but he does it again now- it’s red and yellow, and spiked out like a star. It matches his personality, for sure. “Yeah, I used to sell booze to other kids after I got a fake license. And then I’d go home and work out and listen to shitty music and mope all the time.”

Kaede laughs, suddenly, her eyes sparking. “Oh, no way! I used to sell alcohol, too. And other stuff, actually.” Everyone turns to her, in absolute shock, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, a little sheepishly. “I only found out when I looked through my stuff. I had a whole list of my suppliers and my customers. It was kind of disguised, but it was pretty obvious what it was. So of course I went and got tested for anything after that, but I was all clean.” She wrinkles her nose. “Just thinking about it makes me feel sick. I don’t even think of it as me. It’s just someone else who had the same body as me. We have totally different outlooks on life.”

Oshiro nods serenely, folding her hands in front of her. “Of course. Really, the best way I’ve been told to think of it is… similar to a nature/nurture argument. Danganronpa can’t truly alter the core concept of your personality- they can’t give you a mental illness so much as give you the symptoms of one, or exacerbate one that’s already present. Likewise, they can’t alter your levels of intelligence, which is why they make you take so many exams going in and out. What they _do_ do is alter your memories.” She smiles, red eyes glancing down. “That’s why I like to think of us as sort of…. What could have been. The person before me had an awful life, but if she’d had a better one, she would have turned out like this.” She glances up again, quickly. “Does that make sense?”

“Oh, that was lovely,” Miya sighs. “I like that way of thinking.”

Kaede bites her lip, lets out a little sigh. “I guess. It just makes me think that… if things were different, I could be like that. I mean, I was.”

“Everyone has their breaking points, Kaede,” Amami says gently. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of about…. Being someone who grew up in a shitty environment and adopted the traits of that environment. Especially since you’re not that person anymore.”

“Does it count if it was someone else who changed me?” Kaede asks, softly.

Shuichi shuffles over to her side, reaches out and touches her arm. “It counts if you’ve been this person for ten months and you’ve grown and healed from trauma as them,” he tells her, and when she looks at him, her fact is thankful and so sorry all at once.

Aya smiles over at him, twisting a strand of pink hair around her finger. “Saihara-kun, tell us more about your past self!”

“Hm.” He thinks about it for a moment, for anything interesting about who he was. He liked reading, he liked shitty horror and getting drunk, and he seemed to have… nothing else. “Oh! I left myself a letter. I mean, the person I was left _me_ a letter- there was a letter.” Everyone looks to him, curiously, and he ducks his head. “It didn’t say much, really. Just told me to… not kill myself, I guess, and that it would all be fine, and that I have an important person to look for.”

“An important person?” Kaede asks. “You never told me about this!”

Shuichi shrugs, rubbing his arm. “I guess… I wasn’t ready to go looking for them. Not like I had much to go on.” He smiles over at her. “Sorry. I just haven’t really thought about it until now.”

“Hm.” Nakai frowns, then points at him. “You should find them. Important people are always worth knowing about.”

“But I don’t know if I want to be friends with someone my past self was friends with,” Shuichi protests, squirming a little. It makes him feel gross just to think about, makes him think about fevered excitement and gross opinions and a passion that disgusts him to his core. 

Nakai still looks at him with the same, almost stern, expression. “You gotta listen to me, ‘cos I’m older than you,” he says, and a few of the others have to stifle giggles. “Important people are important people! Are you sure you wanna miss out on the chance to find someone really special just in case they’re a loser?”

“I’ve got fourteen pretty special people already,” Shuichi tries, and Kaede and Amami both make ‘aww’ing noises.

“But you could have one more!” Nakai jumps to his feet, hauls Shuichi with him, and all of a sudden he’s nose-to-nose with a six foot tall punk who seems determined to father him. “Now, once we’re all outta this, I’ll help you find ‘em, okay?”

Oshiro sighs from the floor. “Nakai-san, really. Do you really think the ultimate detective needs your help? I’m sure he can handle it on his own.”

Shuichi slips out of Nakai’s hands, brushing down his jacket. “N-no, I appreciate the offer, really.” He gives the man a small smile, and is immediately pulled in to have his hair ruffled. 

“Alright, kiddo,” he says cheerfully. “Now go sit down and play nice, alright?”

“I actually should maybe go,” Shuichi says, wincing at the clamour for him to stay from the others. “I’m sorry guys, the motives have me really nervous. I want to make sure I’m doing all I can to help, alright?”

Kaede tilts her head, something a little knowing in her eyes. “Need a partner?” She asks. “Or has Ouma got that covered?”

“One day you’re going to need to explain how you put up with him,” Miya mutters, twiddling her hair. Shuichi has to resist the urge to glare at her.

Oshiro nods her head. “Your efforts are appreciated, Saihara. I’m sure I’ll have a look around myself at some point.”

“Good,” Shuichi says, feeling a little soothed by it. He reaches down to scratch his wrist, then remembers the duct tape there, the beeping of his hourglass. “We all need to walk together if we want to get out of here.”

“You’ve got that right!” Nakai says, oblivious to how Shuichi’s heart is choking him. “Now, I’m gonna split, too- I’ll be working out in the gym if anyone needs me!” Everyone choruses in another goodbye, and it’s so loud, they’re so cheerful, and it’s so unbearable.

Shuichi leaves quickly after, because he swears he can hear his bangle beeping in his ears. He swears he can hear his own heart beating it’s numbered beats. He’s going to leave them alone, he realizes, holing himself up in a classroom and clutching his chest. 

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die, not when everything’s been going so well. Not when he loves the others so much. It’s not fair. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to leave them. What’s Kaede going to say- what’s Kaito- god, what’s Kokichi going to do?

Shuichi collapses on the floor and cries, gripping his own shoulders. They’ll be okay, he tells himself. They’ll be okay. Kokichi and Kaede and Maki, they can look at the case he’s building and take over. They won’t let Danganronpa get away. And if the case if completed, then that’s- that’s good. That’s all Shuichi really wants. His friends safe, Danganronpa held accountable. He can- he can die happy, knowing it’ll happen.

But who will arrange baseball Saturdays? Who will bring Kokichi his energy drinks after he has therapy? Who will spot Kaito in the gym when Maki’s already ahead of them? Who will braid Kaede’s hair?  
Shuichi never got a cat. He never got to go on a date. He never found the right books for his bookshelf. He never got to find the right place, the right time to look at Kokichi, with the sun streaming over his face and his body soft and relaxed, to tell him how much he cared for him. He never got to come out. He never got to go to university, or to his friends’ weddings and birthdays, or to his own. He’ll never grow up. He’s going to be Saihara Shuichi, boy-detective, forever. All he was built to be.

Shuichi lowers his head into his knees and sobs.

\--

Shuichi is missing for most of the morning, but eventually Kokichi finds him poking about in the game room. From there, the two of them manage a little more investigation.

They find almost nothing. This place isn’t just a poor imitation because it’s under budget and fixed in reality, it’s lacking all of the flavor of the ultimate academy- there’s no obvious secrets here, no big conspiracy. It’s just what it looks like- a hollow basement set up to murder people in. At least in the ultimate academy, it didn’t look like it was meant for that. This place has torture written all over it. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight.

It’s a cruel joke, really. Take a bunch of kids/adults, build them for a big, grand mystery, a debate between hope and despair, and then shove them somewhere with nothing to investigate. Kokichi was written to strike out against an evil corporation, not to… sit and rot in this uncivilized, festering hole. He doesn’t even think there’s a mastermind here, except for Shirogane. It’s all too… too much, too little, too realistic. He’s a cartoon character.

Everyone’s agreed to eat lunch together, so at noon, it’s lunchtime- though he’s not too hungry, himself. Kokichi and his detective file in early- only a few people sit there. Mommy Tojo, of course, and Kuse and Oshiro, and Akamatsu with lap-Kiibo. 

“How’d it go, guys?” She asks, false cheer in her voice, bags under her eyes. Looks like they’ve all been sleeping well.

“Great!” Kokichi tells her, cheerily. 

Shuichi follows after him, a little more low-energy. “We made no progress,” he says calmly, as they file over to the table with the food set out on it- a really simple dish. Stir fry, it looks like. “Tojo, this looks lovely.”

She bows her head, smiling softly. “I’m pleased. There wasn’t much to work with.”

“Too rich for my palette,” Kokichi chimes in, grabbing a plate of his own. He’s not really in the mood for super friendly conversation, especially with his limitations- he won’t even be able to tell Momota he’s an idiot like this. Ha ha.

Fortunately, Shuichi doesn’t protest when Kokichi moves to the very end of the table, just follows him and sits down quietly. 

They eat. It’s pretty good, for being almost-plain rice and vegetables covered in canned teriyaki sauce.

“Hey,” Shuichi says, pushing around his rice. “Do you want to… go and watch a movie or something?”

Kokichi blinks at him. “You want to reenact our movie nights in this delightfully comfortable environment? I’d love to!”

Shuichi turns a little pink. He glances over at the others, then back to his rice. “I was just thinking. Um. I just haven’t ever- I don’t know, I thought it might be- like, it could be different. We could..’ He trails off, shakes his head. “Nevermind, it was dumb.”

Kokichi raises an eyebrow. The poor detective looks so miserable about it that it makes him feel weird. It’s just movies. “I’ll never watch movies again, when we get out of here.”

That didn’t seem to work. Shuichi still looks sad, even when he smiles. “Ah, thanks, Kokichi.” His gaze drifts off. It’s weird. The atmosphere is weird.

Kokichi picks at his vegetables. The atmosphere keeps being weird.

He stands up, sharply. “I’m not going to the bathroom,” he says. Shuichi blinks up at him.

“Uh, okay?”

Kokichi nods, like he was waiting for permission, and then he bolts out of there. Sad Shuichi is a little too much for him right now, when he’s busy having an existential crisis about his ability to function in real life. He runs down the mossy halls of the school, his shoes tap-tapping over the ground, straight jacket straps flying behind him. He feels so useless. He doesn’t know who he’s supposed to outwit. How long are they going to be stuck here before he can figure out how to beat the psycho freaks who’ve got them locked up.

Kokichi slows down, skids around a corner, drops into a walk as he approaches the bathroom. He’s smiling cheerfully, angrily. He’s so restless.

He grabs the handle, grits his teeth. He hates all of this. He hates being here. He hates that he’s so tired by it.

The bathroom door swings open.

Ah….?

His favourite song rattles in his ears- _an empty shampoo bottle, or a full garbage bag. which one do you want? you want neither?_

Both sit in the bathroom, one tipping out of the waste bin, the other resting on the sinks. Blood drips from the open bottle.  
The bathroom has six shower stalls, a row of urinals, and two stall toilets. In one of those shower stalls, blood soaks out around it. When Kokichi walks over, he finds that that’s because the drain is clogged with Nakai Taiyo’s hair. 

There’s an odd rush of relief that strikes him, like adrenaline, like lightning, that it isn’t one of his classmates lying here. That doesn’t overtake the horrible, gross feeling in his stomach.

Nakai Taiyo’s head has been separated from his body. The wound is too gross to look at, but he can’t stop. The blood around the edges, where it’s mixed with water, is almost pink, familiar and alien and _Danganronpa,_ stamped all over this crime scene. The blood in his neck is red, real, real, red, real-

Kokichi swings backward, crashes into the row of sinks. He thinks he might be sick. So, this is it, huh? All over again. This is the second time he’s thought _this is the first corpse I’ve ever seen in real life._ This is the first time it’s been true.

Nakai Taiyo stares upward, unblinking. His red hair tangles in the drain, in his own blood, like an octopus, floating about in the tiny pool of water. His body is collapsed, crashed into the side of the shower, absolutely naked and undignified. It’s so cliche. It’s laughable, really. He can’t fucking believe he’s ended up in this shitty situation. 

_If I had a penny for every time I ended up in a killing game,_ he thinks bitterly, still staring at the body. 

Kokichi wonders how to play this. Big, probably. Crying, wailing, the whole works. A bit of laughter, too. His instinct is to cover up the actual events with his own reaction, to draw everyone’s eye, to make them dismiss him as crazy, awful, mean. He takes a few moments to catch his breath, then puts himself into business mode. Kokichi takes a swift scan of the bathroom, noting everything obvious- the placement of the body, the distance between it and its head, where exactly the blood has pooled, and where it’s splattered. The blood on the shampoo bottle, the absence of any on the bodywash next to it. The broom in the corner of the room, the lack of gore on the towel draped over the shower door. The trash can in the corner, full of… toilet paper. Or tissues. Kokichi takes another look at it, and then crawls over, digging through the trash. It’s pretty gross, obviously, sitting on his knees in a set of communal bathrooms owned by god knows what perverts, a beheaded man about, eh, two feet away from him, and a whole bunch of toilet paper he’s shoving his hands right in. Still, at least the paper is… clean. Clearly covering something up. Kokichi digs in deep, yanks out- the murder weapon, he guesses. Or, one of them. Sure, this big, bloody cleaver is probably what was used to behead him, but that couldn’t have been it. It would have made some noise, right?  
Reality is slipping around the edges. What is real, in a killing game? What can he trust?

“Kokichi?” Someone calls, and he knows who it is, he thinks, ah, oh no, as the door swings open once more. 

Shuichi steps in. “You’ve be- oh my god.”

“I’m dead!” Kokichi stammers, whirling around. “I’m- don’t look at me, I’m dying!” He realizes after a second that he’s still waving the cleaver in the air, and quickly lowers his arm. “Also, I definitely killed that man!”

Shuichi is standing in the doorway, clutching his chest. His eyes flick from the blood, to Kokichi, back to the blood, and then he just- runs forward, like some idiot in a drama, runs forward and throws his arms around Kokichi (narrowly avoiding getting skewed on the cleaver) and hugs him tight. “Oh god,” he whispers. “Oh god, christ, god. Fuck, Kokichi.” Somehow, his grip tightens even more. 

“I’m- I’m dying,” Kokichi says, because it’s the only stable lie he can think of.

Shuichi rests his head on Kokichi’s shoulder and lets out a breath that sounds as if it contained all the air in his whole body. “Fuck,” he whispers again. “I thought it was you.”

“It- It was,” Kokichi says, stupidly. The cleaver hangs from one hand, uselessly. The other comes up to Shuichi’s shoulder, twists in the fabric of his shirt. All earlier awkwardness is forgotten. Obviously. There’s a dead man in the bathroom.

Shuichi breathes out again, then leans back, touches Kokichi’s shoulders, his hair, his face. His eyes are so heavy, shifting from place to place, so filled with worry. Like he’s checking that all the pieces of Kokichi are still there. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. God.” 

And then he moves away, and it’s only then that Kokichi remembers he, also, has to breathe, and he inhales air with the same desperate energy Shuichi had exhaled it. The detective moves in to inspect the body, and Kokichi turns over the blade in his hands. Blood rubs off it, flakes and drips on his fingers.  
Shuichi reappears by his side a moment later, still looking shaken- in fact, he’s barely holding it together. But so is Kokichi, so who is he to judge. “What’s that?” he asks.

Kokichi holds it out. “Just a totally unrelated meat cleaver covered in blood. It didn’t come from in there.” He points to the bin, with all the toilet paper stuffed inside.

Shuichi frowns, taking it and examining the end. “In the waste bin?”

“It was hidden suuuuuper well.”

“Kind of like someone wanted us to find it?”

“Why would someone want that?”

Shuichi is quiet for a moment. His hands are shaking a little. He looks at Kokichi. “What do you want to do?”

The question comes as a surprise, but Kokichi quickly remembers- a plan. He always has a plan. 

Three minutes later, Shuichi re-enters the bathroom with most of the others in tow. The meat cleaver is tucked carefully into Kokichi’s back, held up with the straps in his shirt (that do, actually, serve a functional purpose- but only the ones inside. Kokichi makes a show of crying, and then reveals that he doesn’t care, lying through his teeth. The other’s don’t even scoff at him, too fixated on the blood by his feet.

The monitor flicks on, and the body discovery announcement plays- the actual Monokuma, this time. Must be a clip from the show. It rattles around his ears. 

The ultimate paramedic plays as their coroner. Shuichi and Kokichi watch with interest.

Tsuji frowns, staring at the body but not touching, their sensible boots off to the side as they lean in. “There’s a smaller cut here,” they murmur, tracing the air above it with a finger. Kokichi leans in, and sure enough- a thin, definitely intentional slice across his lower neck, almost fraying against the other cut. The two overlap in sections, like someone had used it as a guideline. 

Shuichi nods, and has the face of a detective who is clearly memorizing information. Kokichi nods, too, blinking innocently. 

Akamatsu rushes over and drags Shuichi to investigate some other places, and they’re forced to split up. Shuichi’s clearly not happy about it, and it’s not like Kokichi is, either- it leaves an awful, hollow pit in his stomach. But them’s the breaks, right? He skips on upstairs to check out the computer with the school rules on it, the faux-monopad.

His theory turns out to be correct when the computer goes on to give major details about the crime, including time of death, but not including what actually killed him. 

Kokichi listens in as the detective and his Akamatsu collect alibis. 

This crime is just like the building it took place in- a sad facsimile of a larger-than-life tv show. Trying to be more than it is, mimicking its own culture. There’s no big twist here, really. It’s kind of obvious from the beginning.

Kokichi meets Shuichi’s eye every so often. Neither of them are smiling.

\--

Shuichi walks into the trial room almost entirely certain who did it. Going through six trials and then rewatching almost the entirety of the series of Danganronpa gives you an eye for things, he guesses. That doesn’t make it any more draining when he has to share a glance with Kokichi as they separate and move to opposite sides of the courtroom- which, like everything else in this hell-prison, is both uncannily similar to the simulation and Not Quite Right. 

Shuichi steps behind his designated podium. On his left, Iruma sets Kiibo down on his own little stand and seeing his little robot face bobbing there is a little comforting. He’s so determined to help them, so full of desperation to see them succeed, so willing to do whatever it takes. Shuichi keeps realizing how much he missed Kiibo, again and again and again.  
(There’s a poisonous little part of his mind that murmurs about how they can’t be certain this is Kiibo, if this can really be trusted. Why would this group of so-called fans, who claim to have no official tie to Danganronpa, be able to access the Kiibo in their simulation, the files of the robot who remembered them? Even if it is Kiibo, he could have malware. He could be chipped. There might still be people spying through his eyes.  
Shuichi wonders when he got so cynical, so untrusting. Was it when he was at his safest and attacked? Was it way back when he forced Tsumugi to show her hand? Was it when he was forced to read article after article about how little people cared for them?  
Logically, he knows that Kiibo needs to be taken with a grain of salt, that his statements need to be considered carefully- nothing personal, just the circumstances. But Shuichi is good at ignoring the cynical parts of him, the parts that need to question everything. He tucks that thought up, away, slides it somewhere for later. Only if he feels the need to start distrusting that particular circumstance.)

He’d forgotten how utterly draining it was to be in a trial room. This one in particular has an air of grim resignation and of hopeless panic all at once. Kaede, chewing her nails, staring at the ground, still trying to murmur supportive comments. Kaito, looking pained and guilty all at once. Kokichi, unreadable, smiling, innocent, false. The outliers on the fringes of their group looking in.

The monitor above them flickers and switches on- a new still image, this time of Monokuma in the trial room itself. The same voice from before comes floating out- pitched up, a little unsuited to the face on the screen, and explains them the same rules they all know, that echo through their heads every night. 

The trial begins, and even with the weary knowledge weighing on him, Shuichi still feels the familiar rush of a battle creeping up on him- the clash of swords and phrases, going by too fast to keep track of, popping around him like bubbles.

“Shirogane did it,” Chabashira says immediately. “No one else would have. She’s such a snake, of course she did it.”

Shirogane bites her lip, looks every inch the anxious classmate, the friend who was so nervous in every trial. “A-are you sure, Chabashira-san?” She asks, softly. “Because if you choose wrong-”

“Oh, shut up,” Maki says, rolling her eyes. “We all know you want nothing more than to watch us all burn.”

Shirogane’s eyes glint behind her glasses. Shuichi stares around the room, at the people, so anxious, waiting for judgement.

“Well, I think we should consider all the blackened,” Aya says softly, her voice hesitant, shaking.

“What do you mean?” Kaito asks, brow furrowed.

She wrings her hands. “Ah, I just… I mean, some of us have killed people before, right? I think- it’s worth considering th-the people who might-”

“That was different!” Oshiro cuts in hotly, her face a little red. “We’re different people!”

“Are we?” Kokichi asks, casually. Shuichi glances over, and Kokichi looks right at him, smiling lazily. “Are we really different? Aren’t the circumstances just the same? This is exactly the setting we killed in- only a little higher budget, maybe.”

Kaede trembles as she lifts her chin. “I don’t- I don’t-” She’s so strong, her eyes blazing, and then she looks at Shirogane, and it just- dies back. She hangs her head, closes her eyes. “There’s only one person in this room I would ever want to kill,” she murmurs.

 _“Kaede,”_ Shuichi says, something pulling on his heartstrings. He steps in for her. There’s no need for this trial to go on too long. He just has to coax them to confess. “Okay, come on guys, let’s focus on the facts, not make profiles. Was there anything that seemed unusual to any of you?”

“I think we should start with… like, covering what we know, right?” Kuse offers, biting his lip.

“Why don’t we all just trust the ultimate detective?” Oshiro asks, clearly frustrated. She flips a ringlet over her shoulder. “Not only he is a detective, he’s a protagonist- he’s built to figure these things out.”

“No,” Shuichi cuts through. “It’s important for you guys to be able to navigate this, too. You can’t give one person that much power.”

“But we all trust you, Shuichi,” Kaede says, and his heart aches. 

“I know,” he nods, even as he bats down her statement. “But that doesn’t mean you should listen to me unanimously. We all need to develop our deductive skills if we want to get out, okay?” And if they want to survive without him. He’s not sure Kokichi will… be in the right shape to lead a trial.

Himiko sighs, pulling her hat down over her face. “But there’s no point in wasting time here,” she says, clearly frustrated. “Haven’t we spent enough time in trials, Shuichi?”

“I need your help to solve it,” he replies, bowing his head. “I can’t do it without your testimonies and support. We need judge and jury, right?” He looks around them again, trying to smile. “So, is there anything you guys want to cover first?”

“I guess… the method of murder,” Iruma says, her usually brash voice toned down. “Beheading seems a little- overzealous, right? Why go out of your way to make the crime scene messy, especially when you’re trying to leave as little evidence as possible. And on that note, how the fuck did anyone not hear?”

Shuichi frowns, the all-too-familiar rush of adrenaline pounding through his blood, like the pulse of a song. “That’s… because the beheading was done after the murder,” he decides. “Tsuji, you saw the body, right?”

Tsuji, ultimate paramedic nods, thumb and forefinger against their nurse’s mask. “The beheading was done all at one- not with a blow, but by sawing through the muscle and tissue,” they say, pointing up in the air. “Furthermore, there was another, smaller wound on his neck that had already been cleaned and was no longer bleeding- I am not a coroner and cannot say with what it was applied, but the created wound was deep and thin.”

“He would have bled out quickly with his throat cut,” Maki murmured. “He wouldn’t have been able to scream, either. And beheading him was an excellent way to cover it up.”

Iruma makes a frustrated sound. “Ugh, but why? Why cover it up?”

“A cut to the throat,” Maki says, “is going to need to be done swiftly, and accurately. Because you can’t choke the person out, they’ll have time to scream if they don’t die. You would need to get close, and get a good grip on them. And you mustn’t hesitate- silencing someone swiftly is a challenge. The human body is resilient. Whoever did this must have had control over their hands, and the height to match Nakai’s-”

“That’s wrong,” Shuichi pipes up, before she can get any farther, his heart pounding. He wants to leave it up to them, but he can’t let the trial veer off course. “Using a tool, the culprit could have made themselves the same height.”

“What, they dragged a stool in?” Hoshi asks, frowning. 

Next to him, Amami blinks, leaning his elbow on the podium and sinking forward. “Like a garbage bin?”

“Exactly.” Shuchi nods, his breath caught in his throat. “I know it sounds stupid, but the bin in that bathroom was metal and wide. It could have easily held up someone smaller.”

Oshiro frowns, pointing one gloved hand in the air. “It seems like a bit of a stretch, to be able to set something like that up without him noticing.”

“Unless he knew,” Yonaga chimes in, her voice forced into cheer. “Would that be possible?”

“Why the fuck would the guy let some almost-stranger drag in a garbage bin into his shower?” Miu shouts. “What the hell was he expecting to happen? That he could fuck them into the bin?”

“Maybe they offered to wash him,” Amami adds, a little slyly. 

Shuichi resists the urge to shake them all into focus, but Tsuji saves him, frowning. “Nakai wasn’t too close with any of us, I don’t think, being from an older season, but I was on good terms with him. And he knew you too, right, Oshiro?”

“That is correct.” The composer bows her head, grief flitting across her face for a moment. “Nakai and I were… friends, I suppose. I had… lost contact with him, recently. But we would spend time together at every meetup Danganronpa forced. Despite being in different seasons, we got along fairly well. Even if our natures are a little different.”

Chabashira narrows her eyes at her. “So he would have let you into the-”

“I would never get into a shower with that man, murder or not,” Oshiro snaps, lifting her chin. “Just because we were friends doesn’t mean I did it. I don’t know of the extent of his other relationships. He… spoke fondly of Akamatsu, but I suppose we all do.”

Everyone turns to look at Kaede. She shrinks, but continues to try and smile. “Guys,” she says, her voice trembling just a bit. “I wouldn’t do this. And I definitely- I wouldn’t lie about it now. I wouldn’t let you all die.”

Kuse shifts, nervously. “It’s just- I mean-”

“It wasn’t me!” She says, her voice rising a little, laughter floating out, her eyes wide. She looks over at Shuichi. “I wouldn’t- I wouldn’t do something like this!”

Before he can open his mouth, Tojo jumps in, her voice steady. “People who kill… tend to have different methods, according to their goals. When Akamatsu tried to kill, she put in several layers of separation between her and her target. If she was capable of doing something like this, she could have lain in wait for the mastermind, rather than setting a trap. I truly do not believe Akamatsu-san is capable of something as brutal as this.”

“Well, we didn’t think you were, either,” Himiko mutters, a little bitterly. Tojo flinches.

The trial room almost spins. It lands on Kaito, with his fists balled up. “What I don’t get is the shampoo bottle,” he says, frowning. “Why was it so bloody?”

“That’s probably because…” Shuichi closes his eyes, dragging his thoughts away from the fact he might have to leave them. “It was inside the shower at the time of the murder. There were suds, in the base of Nakai’s hair. He must have been washing it.”

“So why move it?” Tojo asks, pressing a hand to her mouth in thought. “It seems a very obvious thing to do. They didn’t even clean the blood off.”

“Maybe the killer was a neat freak,” Miya points out, her voice as soft as usual. 

Tojo frowns, lowering her hand. “Then why not clean the blood?”

“Maybe they were absent-minded?” Kiibo offers, his face just as emotive even when confined to a screen. 

Shuichi shakes his head. “No. I think… I think the shampoo was involved in the death. Our killer may have offered to wash Nakai’s hair. Perhaps that was what allowed them to drag the bin in.”

“Ah… That still seems far-fetched- no offense,” Aya adds, nervously. “Why the bin? And wouldn’t they have to be naked too- for that matter, wouldn’t their hair still be wet?”

“The crime took place at 11.30, half an hour before we were set to meet for lunch,” Shuichi says, as steadily as he can. “For someone with shorter hair, that’s plenty of time to dry off.”

Yonaga clasps her hands together, her eyes lighting up. “So we just need to look for those of us who don’t have alibis, right, Shuichi?”

He smiles back at her, despite the rolling of his stomach. “That’s right. Kokichi and I can cover for each other, for example.”

Rather than speaking, Kokichi throws up a lazy peace sign. Maki frowns. 

“Not sure how much I trust him, but alright, detective,” Tsuji says, adjusting their glasses. “I have no alibi. I’ve been coming and going from my bedroom and the warehouse all day- I believe a few people can account for me- Kuse, Aya, and Shinguji, right?”

Shinguji nods once, in a slow movement. “For the time period of death… I was with Amami,” he murmurs. “We were discussing who might be behind our containment.”

“That’s right,” Amami says, his voice low. “And I know that it wasn’t Maki or Kaito, either, because they were talking with us just before it hit 11.30.”

Kaito pumps his fist. “And it’s not Gonta, because he and me were trying to smash open the windows all morning, and when I left, he had Chabashira with him.”

She nods in confirmation. “And Himiko and Angie came to collect me for lunch only a little later. We were early, right?” She looks over at Tojo, who nods.

“I had been in the kitchen from 11 to 12 preparing food,” she says softly. “Akamatsu-san joined me with Kiibo at around 11.15, and Oshiro joined me five minutes later. Kuse arrived at around…. 11.45, and Ouma and Saihara-kun joined us at five minutes to twelve.” She bows her head once she finishes speaking and folds her hands.

“Yes, that follows,” Oshiro says, bowing her head. 

They go round and round, clearing each other’s names- Hoshi was with Iruma, Aya was with them too, Kiibo was with Kaede. Eventually, they’re left back where they started, and everyone is staring over at Tsuji.

“I didn’t do it,” they say, flatly. “I’d be happy to show you all what I’ve been working on, but I can’t leave the courtroom.”

“So, that’s a fat lot of nothing, then,” Kaito grumbles. “Come on, just tell us if you did it!”  
An eye twitches from behind their glasses. “I am telling you. I didn’t do it.”

“Michi wouldn’t do that!” Aya cries, clasping her hands together. “They’re a paramedic, they’re all about, ah, helping people!”

“Tsuji could have killed Nakai and then gone on to mislead us all with the evidence,” Shinguji points out, quietly. “I’m not saying it’s what happened- simply a possibility.” 

“The crime would have taken too much time for any of us to comit,” Angie says, tilting her head. “Tsuji, what do you have to say for yourself?”

They’re clearly growing frustrated, pulling at their gloves. “I didn’t know I needed someone paying attention to where I was every moment of the day!” 

Shuichi lets them all argue, then bites his lip. “Hold on,” he says, slowly. “Tsuji-san, do you mind confirming something for me?” When they nod, he takes a breath. “Could you please show me your forbidden action?”

Tsuji stares over at him for a long moment, then sighs. “Fine,” they say, leaning around the backs of the others between them, holding out their arm. 

_Must not come in contact with blood._

“I figured,” he says, nodding. “Tsuji couldn’t have done it.”

Immediately, several people chorus with objections, demands to see too, disbelief.  
  
"Are you sure, Shuichi?" Kaede asks, softly. 

He nods. "This kind of crime would have violated their forbidden action."

Silence settles around them all. Gonta tilts his head. "So.... what next?"

"Ugh, you had to ask," Kokichi sighs. His disappointment draws all of their attention, which he seems to revel in despite the circumstances. The tiny clown grins around the trial room, then reaches behind his back- and whips out a giant, blood-stained cleaver.  
(Shuichi knew it was coming but still winces. Surely Kokichi didn't need to make it that creepy.)

Several people shriek and wince, and Kuse immediately flips his shit. "What the fuck is that?"

"Oh, just a big knife. No relation," Kokichi says, turning it over in his hands. "I definitely didn't find it stuffed in the wastebin full of toilet paper."

"You- you _have_ the murder weapon?" Kaito stutters. "Dude!"

"It was suuuuuper hard to find," Kokichi says.

"He's lying," Himiko, Maki, and Amami all cut in at once. Kokichi just grins.

Shuichi tries to pull their attention back, pressing a hand to his chin. "So... it was like it was meant to be found, then?" Kokichi nods cheerfully. "In that case," he continues, "It seems as if someone took the cleaver, pulled out a bunch of loose toilet paper, and used that to cover it up. This must have all happened after the crime, to make it more obvious for us to search for the cleaver."

“But- wait,” Shirogane says, suddenly. All of them turn to her, and she frowns, then presses a hand to her mouth. “No, no, ignore me. It’s fine.” And then she’s all sweet smiles again.

Amami scowls over at her. “Good,” he says, voice low. “Stay out of this.”

“No-” Shuichi wets his lips. “No, let her speak.”

Immediately, the others dissolve into argument, into combat, but he waves them off, zeroes in on Shirogane, calm and sweet and soft. 

“I mean,” she says, liltingly, “the bin was full of toilet paper this morning, too. It hadn’t been added in later.”  
Everything gets very quiet. She points a finger up in the air, tilting her head sweetly. “I mean,” she says, “it was plain to see. I thought it was preeetty unusual.” 

“She’s lying!” Himiko spits, bunching her hat under her hands. “It happened in the boy’s bathroom!”

“Why on earth would you be in the boy’s bathroom?” Asks Maki, flatly. Shirogane just smiles.

Shuichi looks over at Kokichi. A moment of understanding passes between them, and Shuichi grits his teeth, takes a moment, clears his throat.

“Actually,” he lies, “I think she’s right. I noticed it earlier too, it just slipped my mind until now. I didn’t realize someone had hidden something in it.”

The others stare at him. Tsuji clicks their tongue. “Really, Saihara,” they say. “Put your head in the game, would you?”

“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head. “I only noticed now.” Kokichi’s smile is satisfied. Shirogane’s is disturbing.

Kaede frowns, shaken but still thinking. She twirls her hair around her fingers, lost in thought. “So… so, someone planted the cleaver ahead of time? And then planted it again, like they wanted it to be found? Why do that?”

“If the cleaver had been hidden ahead of time, it would have made talking your way into the shower a lot easier. And when it was planted after the crime, it would have seemed like more time was spent hiding it than really was,” Maki says, quietly, evenly, supportive as she can be. Kaede looks a little comforted. “Furthermore, if they wanted us to find the cleaver, they probably wanted us to assume it was the murder weapon- beheading someone with a cleaver would take much longer than slitting their throat. Much faster to do it after death, so the cleaver is probably more of… an accessory, if you will.”

“Well, what’s the point?” Hoshi asks, raising an eyebrow. “They wanted it to look like the kill took more time than it did?”

“That’s right. I think that will lead us to our culprit’s identity,” Shuichi murmurs, letting his eyes drift around the room. “Who could have had the time and opportunity to frame Tsuji for this crime?”

“But we all have alibis,” Himiko says quietly.

Shuichi shakes his head. “We all have alibis for near or around the crime. One of us only has an alibi for _after._ ” He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a breath. He really doesn’t want to do this again.

“Shuichi?” Kaede asks, her voice soft. “Shuichi, who is it?”

He opens his eyes. Swallows back his fear. Stares right over at the ultimate herbalist- Kuse Satoshi, age twenty-one, an absolute stranger to him. “You have an alibi for 11.45, but not one for 11.30.”

“M-me?” He looks like he’s taken a physical hit, almost stumbles back. “But- that’s fifteen minutes! You can’t expect me to have done all that in fifteen minutes!”

“The time of death was 11.30,” Shuichi says, doing his best to keep his voice calm, confident. He’s got to direct this trial. He’s got to show them all the truth, so that later, when he can’t…. They can find it for themselves. “But that doesn’t account for the set-up. That could have been done much earlier- like while everyone was talking this morning, before Nakai went to the gym.” Shuichi fights back a rush of I could have saved him, stopped him, and straightens up. “Only you and Tsuji weren’t present at that time. And Tsuji didn’t do it, and the rest of us wouldn’t have the knowledge to set them up- only you, Kaede, and the others who know each other from past seasons. You’re also the only one who could have a feasible excuse to wash Nakai’s hair.” He bites his lip, lowers his voice a little, tries to soften it. “Because you’re a herbalist. I heard you two talking about treatments for muscle pain yesterday.”

“But- but my hair wasn’t wet!” Kuse tries, and the desperation in his eyes is far more familiar than it ever should be. Shuichi has to try so hard not to close his own.

He breathes. Lifts his chin. “The showers have weak water pressure. You could have easily avoided getting your hair wet, and simply changed on your way to lunch. The blood would have been more of a problem than water- as long as your hair was dry, your clothes would cover up the rest.”

Kuse stares at him for a long moment, then lets out a shaky little sigh, and then another, and then he’s sobbing, pouring his face in his hands, and all Shuichi can do is watch as he cries and cries and cries. It stings.

“H-how?” The herbalist stammers, his voice weak. He looks even younger than they do. 

Shuichi closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. He’d never wanted to have to do this again. “Because it’s never who you expect it to be at first,” he murmurs into his hand. “Danganronpa- the trials, the characters, us- we’re written to be confusing. We’re designed for these trials, really. So if all signs point to Tsuji, it’s not Tsuji. Or at least, it’s not Tsuji like you think it is. There’s always another shoe ready to drop.” He opens his eyes, forces himself to stare over at the man he’s subjecting to death, to look at his skinny limbs and his floppy hair and the way there’s nothing but fear and shame in his eyes. “And I figured… you’re one of the only ones with the means or motive to do that- the rest of us don’t really know them well enough.” 

“Why?” Kaede asks, softly. Kuse screws his hands up into balls. 

“Because- because I can’t die here!” he sobs. He lifts his wrist, presses the button. His life flashes before their eyes in cheery neon- _Must not drink._ “I- I’m so thirsty,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “They say it takes two days to kill you without water. It’s summer. I’m sweating. There’s no fruit here, no soup, nothing. You- you don’t know what it’s like. I can f-feel it killing me.” His voice has gone all low, grating through his throat. It’s hard to look at him.

“Idiot!” Tsuji shouts suddenly, pounding their podium. “We could have figured something out- that’s exactly what IV drips are for, you-”

“Do you see any lying around?” He snaps back. Then he laughs, and shakes, and doubles over, clutching his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he says, raising his head again, eyes shining. “I can’t take another day in here. I just… I just want to go home. I fucking hate this place. It’s making me crazy.”

Kokichi’s staring over at him, expression carefully blank. “And here we see the wonderful benefits of Danganronpa’s influence on an ultimate’s psyche,” he says calmly. 

Kuse sobs, wrapping his arms around himself. “My head hurts, and my throat hurts, and my lips are chapped, and I- I’m so tired. I hate it. I hate this place.”

"I hate it too, but I didn't _murder someone!_ " Oshiro shouts over at him.

“I was just starting to fix things with my family,” he sobs, and every word is like a knife to the core. “I was just- it’s been so many years, and they were starting to forgive me, and I- I can’t die here, I can’t die without fixing things. My little brother…” And his words dissolve into sobs.

“What made you think this was the right way to fix it?” Miya asks, quietly. “Kuse, really…”

The room is sober, cruel beyond words. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

“Come and receive your punishment!” Monokuma’s voice chirps from the hanging monitors- so loud and sudden it makes them all jump. Iruma looks about a second from throwing her shoe at it. A spotlights drops onto Monokuma’s empty chair- the chair, the chair of their judge and executioner. Kuse bites his lip, glances around, uncertainty cutting through his resignation. The spotlight blinks. “Well, come on!”

Kuse Satoshi makes his way up to the seat- one step, then another, then another, climbing his way up until he reaches the chair. The herbalist glances around the room, then sits down. 

An awful giggle echoes from the monitor. 

“Press the button!” Whoever’s behind the monitor chirps, and Shuichi’s eyes follow Kuse’s down to the table in front of him, the glint of a button, the gavel laying there sweetly. The herbalist hesitates, then picks up the gavel.

The second he slams it down on the button the room fills with the sound of a gun firing. They all watch, horrified, as Kuse slumps sideways, then falls off the throne in a heap. The monitor above him flashes green- _Kuse Satoshi, the ultimate herbalist’s execution,_ it reads. 

The ultimate herbalist’s body leaks brains all over the floor of the trial room. Someone behind Shuichi is violently sick. 

There is no robot bear dragging him to his punishment. There is no overly-elaborate contraption, no explosions, no lingering torture. Just a gunshot. Just like that. 

Red drips down the stairs. This isn’t a simulation.

He hears Kokichi laugh.

Metal shudders, lifts, and the panels on the sides of the courtroom lift up to reveal a set of other machineguns, all of which rotate to point at an individual student. “Now,” the grating Monokuma voice chirps, “we do have guns pointed at all of you, so don’t get any ideas about being able to avoid your punishment. We just prefer to watch you inflict it yourselves!”

“You’re fucking sick,” Kaito shouts, clutching at his chest and looking queasy. “You’re fucked in the head!”

“Sure,” they agree. “But we’ve got all your lives in the palm of our hands, so you better play nice, okay?” A ding sounds at the entrance of the courtroom. “Oh, your ride is here. Feel free to leave! Or not. Stay here and cry, if you like.”

Kokichi stares at all the guns around the room, and clicks his tongue. “Pretty small budget, huh?” He says. 

Shuichi can’t help but agree- or, disagree. The lies are confusing, even when he knows the meaning behind them. “But not big enough to afford proper executions.”

 _“Reality_ can’t afford proper executions,” not-Monokuma says, their voice sounding a little huffy. “You think we can do any of that shit in real life? Don’t be stupid.”

Shuichi thinks of the mechanics required to create a giant piano, and then the mechanical puppetry on using a girl to play it. They may have a point.

No one moves for quite some time. “Do we just… leave him there?” Chabashira asks, quietly, sounding a little choked up. It’s brutal. They’ve never had to deal with this before.

“Our little cleanup crew will handle it,” Monokuma chirps. That sentence is a whole lot more to dig into- who is the cleanup crew, robots or people, do people have access to this building, who is here, who did this, who has such a high budget, what the fuck-

“No,” Kaede says. Her voice chokes off halfway through, and she stops to shut her eyes, swallow, and then rub her throat. “No, we can’t- we can’t let them have his- have any body, they’ll probably s-sell it, or something, do some a-awful..”

“We already have Nakai’s,” the Monokuma purrs. Shuichi feels his blood run cold. “You might as well let them be together.”

It’s now that he finds out who threw up, because Iruma sways sideways and grabs onto Gonta as she pukes, again, her whole body trembling. Gonta holds her up as well as he can, desperately whispering reassurances he can’t promise. 

Shirogane stands up, suddenly. He’d almost forgotten her in all the mess. She looks completely composed as she brushes down her skirt, glances up at the guns, and then looks over to smile right at him. “Brilliant performance, as always, Shuichi,” she says sweetly. “It’s plain to see, but if we are to die here, I’m so glad it can be as a part of what I always loved.”

“You-” Maki is out from her podium and over to Shirogane’s side as soon as she speaks, her eyes burning. “You are not going anywhere.”

“Of course, of course,” she says, still just as sweetly. “Whatever you need, Harukawa-san. As long as I can continue to witness such- such wonderful despair! It’s not quite- well. It’s not quite perfect, but goodness, you all play your parts just as well as you were written!”

When Maki punches her, it sounds raw and firm in the quiet room, like someone hitting water from a great height. Shirogane shuts up. Maki’s knuckles have blood on them. (It’s funny, how red blood still seems a little unnatural- like someone’s taken the world and switched on a filter, dragged it down to gritty realism. It’s funny, how he still expects to see magenta. It’s funny how the red makes him panic a little more, every time.) 

“Maki roll,” Kaito says quietly, taking her arm. She doesn’t look away from Shirogane. “Let’s leave her to the others for the moment, okay?” Maki doesn’t react, but she allows him to guide her backwards, still staring at Shirogane with almost dark eyes.

Kaede pinches the skin of her throat, squeezes her eyes shut. “We- we can take her,” she decides. “Me and Amami and the others-”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hoshi says, suddenly. “She’ll get to you like this.” He presses a thumb between his eyes, pushes up his beanie just a little. “She’ll stick with me and the big guy, got it?” His tone books no room for argument. Next to him, Gonta nods, a little uncertainly. 

“We will keep Shirogane safe,” he says. “From herself.” 

The plan drifts around the room, and no one has much energy to do anything but nod. It’s nothing like the aftermath of any other trial.

Except for the lingering sense of despair. That is pretty familiar.

\--

No one is particularly eager to hang out after the trial, even with Akamatsu’s attempts at bringing them together. She gets led off by Tojo and Amami, probably to go cry, and that’s just fine with Kokichi. He’s sick of them, really.

He and Shuichi head back to their room. The trial lasted so much longer than it felt like it did- it felt like eternity and nothing all at once. They bolt their door, shove up a chair, and Kokichi’s uniform is so stiff and baggy. He loved it once, his childish mastermind uniform, made of scraps of fabric and painted by his friends- but that’s not true, and he knows it now, that this was manufactured right down to the tear on the base of his shirt. 

He sits down on the bed, folds his legs up, stares at the floor. Shuichi goes and washes his hands, and Kokichi thinks of Lady Macbeth trying to scrub the blood on her hands away. He wants to tell Shuichi it’s not his fault, that Kuse got himself killed, but he can’t. All he can do is lie. If it were the first killing game, he could at least call Kuse an idiot and hope Shuichi got the message. Sure, Shuichi knows that whatever he says is a lie- that generally, he means the opposite, but it’s not the same. It’ll still be hard for him to hear it. 

It’s not fair.

Shuichi reenters the room with his forehead dripping. He must have splashed himself with water, Kokichi figures, and the sad, wet detective would be funny if it wasn’t so awful.  
That’s not meant to stop things from being funny. Jesus. He’s really off his game.

“You were really great in the trial,” Shuichi says softly. “As always. You’re really good at dropping in information at the right time- even when you’re cursed to only lie, I guess.” He laughs a little, the sound hollow in his throat, as he fiddles with the ends of his shirt sleeves. 

Kokichi opens his mouth, then shuts it. Then opens it again. “The stupidest person stuck in this school? Really? You think someone as idiotic as me did a bad job?”

Shuichi laughs again, comes to sit down next to him. The mattress bounces. “Yeah, I know,” he says, and his voice is so tired, and so weary, but still so painfully fond. “You’re brilliant.”

Kokichi looks away, picks at the blanket. “So they tell me.” They don’t. Nobody but Shuichi does, really. That’s just because most of the people Kokichi hangs out with either don’t appreciate his genius or would never admit they do- which he gets, really. Still, Shuichi looks disturbed by this new lie. 

“I mean it,” he says, nudging Kokichi’s arm. “Really.” 

Kokichi gives him a grin, all sharp teeth. “I know you think I’m stupid, detective,” he says. These are pretty shitty lies, but they’re not killing him, so there’s something. The people who made this bangle are idiots. Sarcasm and lying isn’t the same thing. Well, sometimes, but that’s usually if you’re acting sarcastic about something you really mean- the point is, lies are about deceit, and you can’t deceive someone if they already know everything you’re saying is bunk. It’s dumb. They’re probably reading his heart. He’s a pathological liar, though, would that really work? He already knows lie detectors are fake, so…

“Hey,” Shuichi says, nudging him again. There’s something a little distant in his detective’s eyes, something a little sad there. “What are you thinking about?”

Kokichi stares at him. “You’re not going to try and have a conversation with someone who can only lie.”

Laughter- quiet, almost muffled, raw in his throat. Shuichi ducks his head away, like he’s ashamed to be seen. Kokichi wishes he’d lift it up. Kokichi wishes he could see him more. “Well, you already lie through a lot of our conversations, right? And I get through those okay.” He bites his lip, such a human gesture, and shuffles closer on the bed. Kokichi wishes he didn’t have his legs crossed. He wishes Shuichi would lay down in his lap. 

“There is no difference, now. Everything I have always said has been one hundred percent a lie.” His own words come out lazy- what’s the point? There’s no trick here. His meaning is clear. It’s terrifying.

Shuichi frowns, flopping onto his stomach. He crosses his arms in front of him, stares at Kokichi for a while. “Are you doing okay?”

“Never better.” He smiles, bright and cheery. Such a stupid question. “Couldn’t be worse!” Two lies, different answers. Maybe he’s still a little entertaining, even like this. 

Shuichi smiles. It’s so small on his face, so soft, too much to even look at. Shuichi, and his pretty eyelashes looking up at Kokichi. Pretty, lovely Shuichi, who is so pleasant, so gentle, so determined. So smart. Where did you come from, Shuichi? Danganronpa couldn’t have made someone like this, surely. They don’t have the ability to understand the kind of bravery that runs from him. A goodness, genuine and real. 

“Make sure you take care of yourself, okay?” Shuichi murmurs, turning his head just a fraction. “I would… prefer to avoid a repeat of last time.”

Ha. Kokichi snorts. “Nooo, I would love to do it all again. It was such fun!”

“I know. I just-” Shuichi bites his lip, then shuffles to sit up again. “I don’t want to see you sacrificing yourself again, okay? You know it… it wouldn’t be worth it.” The detective doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink, even when his cheeks go red and he leans forward. He’s so- so earnest, true in a way that Kokichi will never understand. “If we got out without you, it wouldn’t be worth it. E-even if everyone else was safe, without you, we- I might as well still be in here, okay? So… so make sure you take care of yourself. No matter what.”

It’s- it’s too much, too much intimacy. No one… no one has ever said anything like that to Kokichi. No one has sat down and looked him in the eye and told him, honestly and specifically, that he’s worth- worth life to them, worth being locked away for. Nobody has ever said anything like that to him. All the scraps of kindness he’s been given, all the sympathy he doesn’t deserve- even from Akamatsu, kinder than she was meant to be- all it is is affirmations of his worth. No one actually liked him, not for a long time. And- and sure, some people do, now. Some people did even before they got out. Gonta likes him. Gonta tells him he likes him. Miu tells him too, in her own way. But he’s never. He’s never been someone’s priority before.

“Kokichi?” Shuichi whispers. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he whispers back, and he’s not sure why his voice is wavering like that, why it’s running away from him, why he can’t keep his emotions perfectly in check. Why is it so hard, caring about someone like this? 

Shuichi leans forward and wraps his arms around him and holds him close. And Kokichi, frozen, heartless, made of ice, can’t move. “Is this okay?” Shuichi whispers, and all he can do is nod, shakily. The hug tightens, Shuichi pulls him closer, like he’s trying to pull him into his ribcage, set him there to sing, a canary in this coalmine. “It’s important to me that you know how much I care about you,” Shuichi murmurs, his voice curling around them. “About you specifically, Kokichi, you as a person and as a- a friend, it’s not… it’s you. It’s you that I live with and come home to, and I just.” He sits back, suddenly, and Kokichi mourns the loss, when Shuichi laughs, his throat wet. “S-sorry. I just. The trial, it made me think about… about everything, I guess. I just need you to know.”

Kokichi stares at him, at the bobbing cowlick at the back of his head, the fringe dipping over his eyes, the beads of sweat on his forehead. “I hate you, Shuichi Saihara,” he says, and he says it as airily as possible, tilting his head away, sniffing disdainfully. 

Shuichi blinks, then lunges forward to hug him again. This time, Kokichi hugs back. This time, he pushes his face into Shuichi’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to stare at the awful room around them.

“Make sure you’re safe,” Shuichi whispers. “Make sure you’re safe, Kokichi.”

They stay like that for a while, just holding each other, pretending not to see everything around them. Kokichi wonders, jokingly, if this counts as a confession- Shuichi, holding him tight, looking in his eyes, telling him how im. How important he is. Just thinking about it makes him feel hot all over, makes him clutch a little tighter to the back of Shuichi’s shirt. He wants to stay like this forever. He’s scared that he won’t get to. He wants more, doesn’t want it in a killing game. Wants to go home. Wants to go to sleep. Wants to be able to tell Shuichi the truth.

Shuichi leans back, again, and it hurts, aches, why does he always have to pull away? But Shuichi’s smile is soft, and his eyes are like rock melon, and his whole face is just as sweet. “Hey,” he says, again. “Come dance with me?”

Kokichi’s so surprised that if he were a lesser man, he might have let a ‘What? Dance?’ leave his lips. Fortunately, his broken mind is good for one thing, and that’s bottling up his immediate reactions, sticking a cork in and setting them aside to ferment and sweeten. “I never thought Shuichi was this sappy,” he says, frowning.

Shuichi laughs, sheepish, and slides off the bed, one hand slipping down Kokichi’s arm, lifting him up by his fingertips, extending an offer. “Come on, let me do it once! In case we die tomorrow.” His eyes twinkle, but in a slightly sad way- like lights shining from underwater. “I’ve never been to a dance before.”

“You sound like a creepy old man,” Kokichi grumbles, but he lets Shuichi pull him off the bed, stumbles forward and slaps a hand onto his arm. An odd sense of deja vu rushes him, but he ignores it, just sets his palm more securely on Shuichi’s shoulder, lets the detective mimic his position. “I assume you have a plan from here?” Absolute bullshit.

But Shuichi looks a little less sad now, twisting their fingers together. Friends don’t do this, Kokichi thinks, and he has the distinct sense he’s thought it before- and not just about them cuddling to sleep. “Well, I know how a waltz works in theory.”

“Ugh, fine, you can lead, then,” Kokichi groans, but if Shuichi was for one minute fooled by that, he doesn’t know Kokichi at all. Kokichi immediately tries to start waltzing, one-two-three with his feet crossing over each other, and Shuichi starts and tries to follow, laughing.

“Kokichi- wait, Kokichi, slow down,” he says, but it’s sink or swim and they manage to find a rhythm, partially due to Shuichi pressing on his shoulder and forcing Kokichi to slow, but mostly due to his excellent dance moves. Their left hands are linked together, their rights set on the other’s shoulder. They’re really a little too close together, but it’s just because the room is small.

They turn in the tiny, cramped room. Shuichi keeps looking at him.

“Really enjoying the music,” Kokichi remarks, dryly. 

Shuichi laughs, the lines on his face going light for a moment- laugh lines, not worry ones. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he says softly. “I’d offer to hum, but I’m not very good.” Kokichi hums for him, a few beats of his song, his favourite song, and Shuichi gently squeezes his fingers. “That’s not a waltz,” he scolds.

Kokichi laughs, because it doesn’t matter- he’d slowdance to the goddamn macarena if it was with Shuichi. A few faint memories flit through his head- drunken, joking, flustered. In their living room, at his parents’ house, on the school rooftop at lunch-

“I feel like I’ve done this before,” Shuichi murmurs, frowning. Kokichi looks up at him.

“Maybe your past life was a player,” he suggests, as if there’s any possibility that’s at all true. Both based on what he knows of Shuichi now and what he’s seen of his past self. 

Still, Shuichi smiles, and they turn slowly. Kokichi’s never felt smaller. “I hope not,” he says, and then they don’t say anything more for a while. 

If Kokichi closes his eyes, he can pretend there’s music. If he closes them tighter, he can pretend they’re at home, the colored lights flashing on their wall. 

They’ll be okay. Shuichi and Kokichi. They can do anything- no killing game is ready for the two of them to actually work together. They can do anything. It’ll all be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so a few notes:  
> fuck class trials they are SO HARD TO WRITE. idk how im expecting to rewrite danganronpa if i have such a hard time with this short barely-a-mystery one. i assume itll be easier when i dont have to force in exposition about ocs ive only introduced a chapter ago? right? riight???
> 
> im SORRY I HAVENT ANSWERED ALL YOUR COMMENTS- i love them and they give me life, honestly, but i have got to go the fuck to bed after i post this im so tired. i promise i'll get to you tomorrow! i've read all of them and i love them. and i love you!!!!! and im sorry for doing angst. sorry for being mean to shuichi. (its ok ill be mean to kokichi next chapter too)


	12. so can we die?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shuichi’s laughter comes out in a breath. He slumps sideways, so he and Kokichi are lying together, parallel lines. Never properly meeting, never converging. Running together the whole time, despite it all. “They’re growing, even in this awful place, with its… fake windows, and no natural light, and nobody watering them. And then I thought about all the plants we have at home, and how… sad I felt, thinking about how they had nobody to water them. But these plants…” His voice is growing a little distant now, drifting his fingers through the blanket. “These plants are growing, despite everything. Even with everything, these plants are so growing. And… and so, I just thought… therefore…”
> 
> THEREFORE?
> 
> “Therefore,” Shuichi repeats, staring down at the characters doodled onto his chest. “Therefore, you and me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!!! i hope this chapter is enjoyable, there was one scene in particular that i *REALLY* enjoyed writing. hehe. 
> 
> So, the next chap might be out… a day or so later than usual? Im trying to wrap up the killing game 2.0 in it so it will have. A Lot. happening. If it’s not out late, i might cut it a bit and increase the number of chaps… not sure! But yeah, it might be out a day or so late- sorry!!! i've just got school, and also it might be. a Big chapter.  
> Thank you so much for your support! I’m sorry i’ve been slow with comments, ive just been a little burned out lately. It’ll pass soon, i’m sure :) i adore all of you <3

_Day four._

Shuichi wakes up, limbs tangled with Kokichi, and he extracts himself carefully. Kokichi is asleep, which is rare- he never falls asleep on his shift. Still, his peaceful expression is so soft that it’s hard to look away, especially when he grabs at Shuichi as he tries to sit up.  
Shuichi stares down at him, and bites his lip. He reaches out, slowly, and pushes a swoop of purple out of the leader’s eyes, watching him the whole time. Kokichi stirs, because he’s a light sleeper, but doesn’t wake, just leans into the touch. 

Shuichi’s heart twists. It’s not fair that he doesn’t get to keep this. It’s not fair that Kokichi won’t, either.  
“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he whispers, barely more than a breath in his mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

Kokichi blinks, grumbles, rolls over. “So noisy, Shumai,” he mumbles. “I’m asleep.”

Despite himself, Shuichi laughs. He leans down again, tugging at the mess of blankets wrapped around them, slots his arms around Kokichi’s waist. It makes him shiver a bit, the way Kokichi melts into them, the way Kokichi shuffles back until they’re pressed together. “Wake up time,” he murmurs. “Time to get up and investigate this place, okay?” 

“Yes,” Kokichi says, as he shoves his face further into the pillows.

Shuichi leans his cheek on Kokichi’s head, breathing into his ear. Kokichi squirms, kicks back with a knee, and eventually rolls over, scowling up at him. His eyebrows are all furrowed, bunched up, and there’s hair all over his face. He blinks angrily, his violet eyes all slow and fluttering against the dim light in the room. There’s a bit of drool on the corner of his mouth, and his freckles are creased, covered in sleep-dust.  
He looks beautiful.  
“Shuichi,” he says, slowly. “I think I hate you, actually.”

“Whatever you say, liar,” Shuichi hums, brushing a strand of hair off his face. “Come on, they don’t have syrup here, but I can dump a spoonful of instant coffee and four sugars into a cup of milk and you’ll feel a bit better.”

“Ooh, don’t spoil me too much,” Kokichi groans, stretching an arm above his head and yawning widely. “Ugh, I’ll stay here. If you bring me my clothes, I’ll kill you.” 

Shuichi laughs, despite everything, as he slides away from Kokichi’s warm arms and off the bed, crossing over to the wardrobe- because Kokichi can throw his clothes on the floor, but Shuichi will pick them up again. He picks out a clean-looking shirt, and then a pair of pants, and then the scarf, and he throws them onto the bed. “Here you are, ultimate supreme leader.”

Kokichi sits up, chessboard-scarf slipping off his head. “How dignified,” he mumbles.

It’s almost easy to forget what’s outside of this room, what happened just a day ago, what’s going to happen later. Shuichi stares at Kokichi, loves him, tries not to watch him dress. He helps him draw new designs onto his skin and clothes, and then the two of them head down to breakfast together and the warm mood fades. 

The dining hall is quiet. No one is happy.

Iruma sits down and sets lap-Kiibo in front of her on the table, and Kokichi makes fun of him by spooning food into his face and pretending it tastes delicious. That cheers people up- a little. But conversation is slow, even with Kaede doing her best to lead it and Shuichi doing his best to join in. 

Things ease up a little when Tojo delivers two pots of tea to the table and mentions an anecdote about baking with Aya the other day. Everyone laughs, as the mentioned girl flushes pink and shrinks closer to Tsuji, who also laughs at her, but kindly, patting her heart-shaped buns. It’s endearing to watch, and makes the whole room feel just… just a little brighter. Friends reach out to each other. They talk about memories, good and bad, and they laugh. Kiibo stares wide-eyed at them all, catching up on almost a year of events he’s missed out on. He’s a good sport, though, and he laughs along with them, smiles away, lets Kokichi neg him a bit, takes it all good-naturedly. Shuichi really had missed him.

Then, Kiibo blinks. 

“Oh! I’ve just been informed that… that I must deliver you a motive.” His face falls. “I’m really sorry, I can’t help it. It’s in my programming, I-” and then he cuts off as his eyes flicker white, and his voice drops any ounce of personhood it held. They all grimace as Monokuma’s voice floats out instead, uncanny and cruel, grating in the air. “Iiiiiiiiit’s motive time!”

“Great,” Shuichi says, gritting his teeth. Quickly, Iruma spins the laptop toward her, starts peering at it- and then steps back, making a frustrated sound.

“Fuckin’ code,” she mutters, stepping back and crossing her arms. The rest of them all crowd closer, staring at Mono-Kiibo, which, considering everything, is really just a particularly cruel imagery. 

“Do we really need motives?” Oshiro asks, her face pinched up. “Things already seem as bad as they can get.”

Kiibo’s mouth opens and closes as the wrong voice drifts out, high and beady and chirping and wrong. “Until a murder has occurred,” he says- or Monokuma says, or- “No student will be permitted to sleep!”

“God,” Himiko hisses, pulling her hat down to cover her eyes. “I hate this. I hate being awake.”  
Chabashira, standing next to her, slips her arms around Himiko’s waist and hugs her close. “What happens if we fall asleep?” She asks, quietly.

“Any student who falls asleep will activate their bangle and the poison inside it,” Mono-Kiibo chirps again. 

Kokichi stares at it, frowning. “What a not-at-all anti-climactic way to kill us all off,” he drawls, leaning his head in his chin. 

Aya bites at her thumb, shifting in her seat. “That- that’s not right, right? They can’t just… stop us from sleeping?”

“We’ll stick in groups,” Tsuji says, their voice more determined than Shuichi has heard them in a while. “We can keep an eye on anyone who seems drowsy, keep them awake. It’ll be fine. We just need to make sure we’re out within a few days.”

Tojo leans over, quietly, her expression fraught. “The human body and mind degrade quickly without sleep,” she says, in her gentle voice. “Our progress in escaping and looking out for each other will slowly falter, too.”

“Well, I guess we’re all going to die.” Iruma stands up from the table, clearly frustrated. “This is such bullshit! It hasn’t even been a day!”

Kiibo blinks, blearily, his face wobbling in the screen. “The motives have a schedule to be released that I can’t ignore,” he slurs, a blue loading blur circling him. “I’m sorry, I had to put one out on the fourth day.”

“It’s not your fault, Kiibo,” Kaede says. 

“I feel so useless,” Kiibo replies, his teeth gritted inside the scene. “I hate this place.”

“Hey,” Oshiro says, suddenly, her voice low. “We should make sure the robot is charging regularly. I’m not sure if running out of battery counts as going to sleep, but we shouldn’t risk it.”

Kiibo murmurs thanks as the room dissolves into plans of how to manage the motive.

They stick in groups. Shuichi watches Kokichi even when he knows he’s not tired. The bangle on his wrist has him paranoid, hyperaware. He has nightmares where he glances down and sees the code glowing green, confirming that he’s safe. He wakes up hyperventilating, and Kokichi has to grab his face and talk to him until he stops shaking. They keep together. He watches Maki and Kaito from a difference, Kaede with her ever-rotating group of girls and sometimes Amami keeping an eye on her.

It only takes until the mid afternoon before the body discovery announcement plays. 

They flood into the dorms and find Yoshida Ayako, ultimate matchmaker’s body laid out on the bed, her face red, eyes closed. When Tsuji sees her, they let out a sound that Shuichi never wants to hear again. 

Investigation. Taking alibis. Taking notes. Investigating the dining hall and the outside of the dorms. It goes by in a blur.

Shuichi stands in the courtroom and explains that Aya- that Yoshida, it seems more respectful to call her, was smothered. She didn’t put up any fight, he points out later, when Chabashira suggests that it had to be someone strong. Her door wasn’t locked, he tells Shinguji. He covers alibis. He covers a lack of alibis. He proves it was a pillow used to kill her. He deliberates that it must have been someone she trusted, at least a little. He proves it could have only been Miya.

Miya Fumiko puts up little fight. She always looks a little like she’s not-quite-there, and it’s never more noticeable than here, watching her confess after barely being pushed.

“She asked me to,” she says softly, staring through the courtroom. “She was going to fall asleep.”

A gasp comes from Tsuji, who had been mostly silent for the entirety of the trial. Everyone looks over to them, and find them… crying, lifting up their glasses to wipe their eyes. “She asked me, too,” they whisper. “I- I told her no. I told her… we would be fine. I said I’d keep an eye on her.” They sniff, loudly, then look over at Amami, almost accusingly. “She had narcolepsy. It’s not as- as severe as it sounds, but it’s… unpredictable. Narcoleptics… the boundary between sleeping and being awake is blurred. It means they can sometimes exhibit symptoms of sleep while being awake…. And that they can drop off without realizing.” 

“I’m sorry,” Amami says, apologizing for someone he doesn’t remember, who knew him but he didn’t know back. He looks lost.

They bite their lip. “She… when she asked me, she said she hated not knowing when it was going to come. That she… that she wanted it to be me.” Tsuji inhales again, shakily. “I… I told her I’d keep an eye out. That I wouldn’t let her fall asleep. Instead I let her get killed.” They drop their head and their voice just breaks. “We only split up so I could check on a project. God, I’m so dumb.”

Miya looks over at them, sympathetic but drifting. “I think this motive was made for her,” she murmurs. “They probably expected her to snap and kill someone.”

“She wouldn’t have done that!” Tsuji hisses back at her. They press a hand up against their mask, choking back a sob. “God.”

They cry quietly, as Shuichi talks through the events of the crime like it matters. He feels disconnected, floating, apart from the world. This explanation is for the others, not him- maybe they’ll learn from it, figure it out, if.. If, in some awful, wretched universe, they have to go through another trial without him, maybe they’ll be okay, even if Kokichi can only lie. 

Miya accepts defeat fairly gracefully. “I saw an opportunity and I took it,” she shrugs. “And she was so afraid.”

Tsuji sobs. 

The ultimate sculptor, who says she hasn’t sculpted in years, ascends the stairs and sits in the throne. Monokuma’s voice ripples through the air. She lifts the gavel. “Sleep well, guys.”

Everyone looks away, when the shot rings out. Everybody files out in silence. 

Shuichi and Kokichi make one last sweep of the school, that evening, but the creeping night gets to them, the uneasiness of murder weighing on their shoulders, and they return to their room fairly quickly.

Monokuma did say they could sleep again, after all. That motive didn’t even need a day.

\--

He’s not sure what drives him to do it. It’s the dead of night, because Shuichi always takes first shift when they go to sleep. He’d dutifully woken Kokichi up, sounding very guilty about it, and had drifted to sleep about half an hour later. Kokichi still has another two hours to be alone before he wakes the detective.

It’s the loneliness that gets him. He hallucinates most nights, most days, sees people standing off to the side, watching him silently. Most of them he knows- Harukawa, Shuichi, himself bandaged up and smiling. Some, though, are strangers, who leer at him through the dark, mock his lack of control. One’s staring at him right now, like he’s their favourite tragic character. Like they love him, hate him, drooling in the dark.

Shuichi sleeps next to him, soft, human, breathing. Kokichi stares at him instead of the stranger, instead of the bolted-up door, instead of his own paranoia. Shuichi always pouts a little in his sleep, inhales with quiet little sounds and then breathes out all at once. He snores a bit, occasionally, but it’s not a grating sound- just a soft one. Kokichi is a restless sleeper, limbs all akimbo, but Shuichi is still and solid. He’s always a reassuring presence- serious, a little sobered, always considering things carefully. If Kokichi were to lie down, Shuichi would wrap an arm around him and pull him against him, and he’d feel safe, just for a few moments. If he closed his eyes shut, he might be able to imagine they’re back home, under the blue-green-purple pulsing of their fairy lights, some movie, horror or comedy or a documentary neither of them care about murmuring on the tv. Or, if he’s lucky, his own song, his favourite, playing on loop, murmuring to them, and Shuichi, sweet, thoughtful Shuichi will furrow his brow even in sleep, press his chin into Kokichi’s shoulder as he tries to puzzle out the lyrics. Find meaning there. 

Kokichi, sitting up, alone, awake, cold in his t-shirt, stares down at him, the lines on his forehead. He reaches down and tries to smooth them with his thumb. Shuichi stirs slightly, frowns and then relaxes, looking a little more peaceful. Kokichi’s thumb brushes sideways, then down around the curve of his forehead, across the bags under his eyes, over his cheek. Shuichi’s hand rests on the side of the pillow, his fingers curled up, his cotton sleeve slipping down his arm, revealing the duct tape beneath it. 

Kokichi almost reaches out to link his fingers with Shuichi’s, but something stops him, and they catch on the edge of the tape, his soul snagged on a piece of red thread. He inches his fingers up until they rest on Shuichi’s palm, just lingering there, dew on morning glories. Shuichi’s own fingers twitch.

The duct tape glints in the light.

Kokichi thinks of pandora, of the fateful flaw of curiosity. He thinks of the too-human desire to know. He stares at the tape.

Shuichi doesn’t talk about it, but he’s full of constant reassurances that everything’s okay. In fact, Shuichi says so little of his own code, goes to such lengths to hide it, that Kokichi’s kind of assumed it’s a…. Thou must not tell anyone what this says. No one must know. Some sort of double-edged sword. Something specifically designed to breed this kind of fear, this burning desire to know, to drive someone to kill him- or maybe distrust in a group.  
If he’s right about that theory, looking could kill Shuichi. If he’s wrong… Kokichi thinks of the other codes he’s seen, of his own. None of them have been truly impossible to achieve. He can only figure that Shuichi would hide something that would definitely lead to his death, or something he couldn’t show, for some reason. 

Kokichi’s fingers curl up. He stares at the tape. He stares at Shuichi, soft and sleeping. Shuichi couldn’t lie to him. No one can lie to him. Especially not about something like this. Everytime Shuichi’s said _We’ll get out of this together,_ it sounded like he meant it.

He’s pulling his hand back before he can notice it, watching the way Shuichi’s own hand twitches, reaches for him just barely, and Kokichi pulls away faster, panic creeping through his veins.  
It’s fine. It’s probably fine. Kokichi thinks logically. Kokichi is not an emotionally-driven creature. He will do whatever it takes to win, to survive. He likes information, sure, but he doesn’t need to know everything. He will not gamble on someone’s life for no reason.

This little argument floats through his head as his heard pounds so hard in his chest it actually hurts, as his breath is ripped away. Kokichi moves silently through the room, feels like he’s floating, stumbles over to reach the desk. It’s funny, how controlled his movements are as his heart starts to choke him. The hallucinatory stranger just keeps watching. The amount of eyes they own has tripled. That’s new.

Kokichi takes a pair of scissors. He moves back to the bed. He climbs onto Shuichi’s lap, one thigh on either side of his slim hips. In any other situation, this would make him freak out, but he’s too busy freaking out already.  
Shuichi stirs but doesn’t wake. If he does, Kokichi will- well, he’ll be able to hold him down. He’s not really sure what his plan is.

He takes Shuichi’s wrist. It feels so boney. He can see familiar scratch marks just a few inches down from the tape. Anxious itching, a drive to hurt himself? Who knows. (Kokichi does.) It’s not hard to pull the tape up, just a bit, from where he’s been scratching.

Kokichi pauses. He can’t breathe.  
This is stupid. This is a terrible idea. He has no reason to think Shuichi is lying.

He trusts him.

But Kokichi doesn’t trust anyone, so he pushes the scissors in, cuts the tape away. It falls back in ribbons, and his heart pounds so hard, fucking him down to the core, and he cuts off the tape as he watches the bracelet slowly reveal itself. 

The world seems to fall into slow motion, like- like his every movement takes three times the energy, like time is this unstoppable, physical force, this thing that keeps shoving him forward, needling through his skin and pulling his puppet strings. He can’t stop moving. 

He turns on the bracelet. He reads.

…

Haha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahaha

He should have known. He should have known ages ago, he should have known immediately, he should have- how the fuck did he let _Saihara_ lie to him this long? How did he-

He doesn’t care that Shuichi-. He doesn’t care. He’ll do whatever it takes. He’ll bring the game down, he’ll destroy all of them, he doesn’t care. 

How the fuck could Shuichi just leave him here?

The world dissolves. Kokichi becomes aware, faintly, that he’s crying. When was the last time he cried on accident? That he lost control of himself? He’s always in control, he- he’s always- 

Shuichi stirs slowly, blinking those pretty, long eyelashes. He must have been woken by Kokichi’s laughter. He’s still laughing, still shaking all over- or is he crying? It’s been so long that he’s forgotten the difference.  
“Kokichi?” Shuichi asks, and those sleepy-honey eyes quickly snap to attention, and he tries to sit up- but Kokichi, angry, pained, furious, pins him down, shoves his shoulders into the bed so violently that the whole frame shakes. “K-Kokichi! What’s-”

Shuichi’s eyes flick left. He stares at his wrist. 

Kokichi laughs again. It feels wet and hollow in his throat. He feels amazing. He feels awful. “We’re going to escape together,” he mimics, and something drips from his face. The voyeur in the room is still watching them, only they have a dozen more eyes now.

“Kokichi, listen,” Shuichi says, and he’s gone very still all of a sudden, eyes fixed on Kokichi’s face, like he’s being held at gunpoint. “Kokichi, it’s fine, we still have time. There’s still time. We don’t even need to consider it until the end of the week.”

“You haven’t considered it!” Kokichi shouts, and he knows he has, knows he’s thought about it- knows that’s why Shuichi’s been taking the first shifts, laying awake and thinking about leaving Kokichi all alone. “You can’t just- You can’t just make me all weak and then leave!” He says, sobs, shakes, and it’s a lie because he knows Shuichi can, knows he always could have. 

A hand comes up to touch his cheek and it fucking hurts, burns into him like venom, like ice. He slaps it away, blinks back tears as Shuichi gasps in shock. “Kokichi,” he says again. “Ko, look at me, look at me, I’m not leaving,” he says, babbles, lies, they’re both lying. “I’m not leaving you, I promise. No matter what happens, I’ll always be looking out for you, honestly. Kokichi, please, let me- let me save you, I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.” 

Kokichi laughs, drops his head. Shuichi is lying. He doesn’t care, because if he did, he would know that this- this is worse than death. That he can’t just- dig his nails into Kokichi’s ribs and pull out his heart, human and pulsing and raw, and breathe life into it and show him kindness and take him home and keep him there- keep him by his side, even when things change, show a kind of loyalty that only exists in his diseased, manufactured memories. He can’t do that. He can’t be so persistent, demand to call them friends, give Kokichi a friend, give him an ally, give him something fucking more than that, and then just- rip it all away.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend they’re back in their living room, the colored lights fading from purple to blue. He can pretend they’re safe, slow dancing, swaying, and that neither of them are lying. 

He opens them, and Shuichi is still there, still looking so pained, still trying to tell Kokichi that it’s all going to be fine.  
If they’re both lying, there’s no point to the conversation. 

At least one of them should tell the truth.

Kokichi stares at Shuichi, and he thinks of dancing with him, and he thinks of coming home to him, and falling asleep with him, and his eyes fill with tears but it’s okay, it’s okay because he never cared about his life until Shuichi gave him something he could lose. It’s okay. There’s no point in crying, even as he sobs and his chest heaves and his eyes go all blurry. He blinks it back, because he wants to see him, wants to see Shuichi, wants this- he wants all of it, a whole fucking life with him, not this fraction of months and days and unspoken longing. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. He’s so angry. He cares about him so much. He’s burning with the thought that Shuichi would try to rip himself away. 

Kokichi lifts his head. Shuichi goes quiet, poised, panicked. Kokichi smiles, and he can’t tell if it’s a lie or not, but his eyes are still watering, and he has to do it fast or Shuichi will be covered up with tears again, and Shuichi is the only thing- the only thing he wants to see.

“Shuichi,” Kokichi breathes, and the detective starts opening his mouth, his eyes go wide, noise starts to build in his throat. “I love. I love y-”

Truth is too good for him.

Shuichi is too fast.

Kokichi doesn’t get to finish it, doesn’t get to say the one fucking thing he’s been wanting to say for ages, been too terrified to even think of, the one thing he’s been thinking since they got thrown into this hell. Shuichi lunges up, and the next thing he knows is that he has a whole fist full of fingers in his mouth and the detective is screaming “NO!”

Kokichi bites down, hard. Shuichi doesn’t pull away, shoves his fingers in further, and Kokichi chokes- the whole thing is gross, and awful, particularly when he tries to push Shuichi down again and Shuichi uses his other hand to grab Kokichi’s waist and drag him down.  
Kokichi finds himself becoming completely and irrationally angry. Shuichi won’t pull his hand away, so he bites harder- at the same time, he drags his nails over the detective’s face, tries to stick his fingers in his eyes. Shuichi hisses and retaliates by shoving him further into the mattress, climbing on top of him. Kokichi hates him in that moment, hates the wild look in his eyes, crazed, panicked, as he ignores the fact that Kokichi really will break his fingers, as the pain makes him wince but he still tries to get his whole weight onto Kokichi, tries to trap him down and block up his mouth. Kokichi bucks up, wildly, frees a foot from where it had gotten tangled up, and twists just enough to jam a knee against the idiot detective’s dick.  
Shuichi groans in pain and for just a moment his body goes limp, and Kokichi is pulling back, opening his mouth- and then Shuichi grabs him by the jaw and pulls him down. Kokichi retaliates by raking his claws down Shuichi’s neck, and Shuichi tries to grab him by the hair, and somehow they end off tumbling off the bed, Kokichi on Shuichi, still biting his fingers. They roll sideways, and Kokichi almost twists away, kicking his friend in the stomach, pressing him down, one knee on his chest and the other pressed against his hip, pushing the detective down. Shuichi hisses again, clearly pained, and one of them lashes out- an elbow, or a fist, and Kokichi’s nose meets it with a smack, and he hisses in pain, and Shuichi’s eyes widen and he starts gasping apologies, but that’s all Kokichi needs to shift his weight and pin the detective down.

And he’s fucked to the core, because he looks at Shuichi and thinks _I hope it hurts you as much as you tried to hurt me._ Kokichi is angry, burning, vengeful against the man he loves, and he opens his mouth to tell him just that. Shuichi’s eyes widen, and he pulls at his hands more insistently, and Kokichi smirks, blood dripping from his nose as he tilts his head up and starts to say “Saihara Shui-” 

And then Shuichi lunges up so quickly that it’s hard to see, and he fits his mouth over Kokichi’s, slots it there all triumph and violence, and it tastes of blood when Kokcihi bites his lip, when they fall sideways again and grapple against each other, Kokichi pulling his head away and Shuichi following, and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, as Shuichi kisses him into the floor like he’s wanted for _so long,_ like he’s wanted since that first fucking game.  
Shuichi grabs his wrist, and he grabs Shuichi’s, and they’re struggling, fighting, and something just… shifts, and suddenly Shuichi’s tilted his head, and Kokichi is just melting, drowning, kissing him back like a fucking fool, kissing him hard and angry and clumsy, teeth and tongues. Like he’s trying to shove poison down his own throat.  
And then Shuichi pulls back just for a second, just enough to breathe, and they both open their eyes. 

The moment is frozen, infinite, tiny, and Kokichi thinks, distantly, _I didn’t know he’d closed his eyes, too._

And then Shuichi leans in again, and they’re kissing again, and it’s- fuck, it’s everything, it’s a dam breaking, a fire sparking alight, it is gentle and soft and tender and a thousand times more painful for it. Shuichi nudges his nose against Kokichi’s, and Kokichi tilts his head into it, mirroring each other, their breath soft and even and it is so, so good. Shuichi’s hand slips from his wrist, comes to Kokichi’s face, and cradles it so gently. Kokichi lets his own grip release, slides his fingers up to link with Shuichi’s. Like they’re dancing, he thinks distantly, and he also thinks _please don’t do this to me,_ and he thinks _please don’t stop_ , and he thinks _I love you, I love you, I love you._ It tastes like metal and caramel and… spit.

They pull apart. They open their eyes. Shuichi has blood smeared all over his upper lip, against his nose. His eyes have softened, gentled, and he looks so sad and so… so adoring. They just breathe together, for a moment, let the heat fade from their bodies.

Shuichi is so caring. Too caring. Kokichi opens his mouth again. “I lo-”

The hand on his face slams over his mouth. The hand holding his pins it to the carpet. Shuichi’s eyes grow pained. “I won’t let you _die,_ ” he says, the last word all gritted teeth and choked sobs.

 _I won’t either, asshole,_ Kokichi thinks, and kicks sideways. 

They drag each other over the floor, thump into the desk and the bed, slam each other into the ground. Kokichi’s teeth have left marks all over Shuichi’s hand. The shape of Shuichi’s knuckles are pressed against his hip. He grows more desperate, as they tussel, as Shuichi pulls away for a moment to try and force fabric into his mouth, or keys, or peeled-off duct tape. Kokichi’s truths grow less cruel, more frantic- “The sky is bl-” he tries, right before Shuichi crams his fingers under his tongue. “I dye my h-” right before Shuichi forces his mouth shut. “Miu’s a wh-” right before Shuichi buries his face in his chest. “Grass is gr-” right before Shuichi slams his chin into the carpet so fast that he bites his tongue.

“I hate you!” he yells, and god does he mean it, in this moment, violent and panicked and dragging his nails through Shuichi’s skin, but it doesn’t kill him, it doesn’t kill him, and before he can try again, Shuichi is slamming his face back against the floor. 

It’s all violently romantic- pinned close together, limbs falling in and out of each other, biting, scratching. Kokichi’s gripping Shuichi’s hands, his shoulders, his back, Shuichi has a hand on his face and another on his side as they grunt and try to force each other down. Kokichi swings a punch into Shuichi’s jaw, hooks his fingers in there and drags down a wicked scratch. Shuichi holds his other wrist so tight it bruises, elbows Kokichi off his chest, never takes the hand from his mouth. They crash around, shit falling all over the floor, until Kokichi drags Shuichi to the end of the bed and misses how Shuichi’s eyes light up. Shuichi goes very pliant for a moment, so much so that Kokichi stops actively hitting him and just focuses on trying to pull the hand out of his mouth.  
And then, as soon as he does, Shuichi lunges up -again- and slams something over his mouth. Kokichi goes to rip it off, but Shuichi flips them backwards, rips it off for him. Or not off, but away. Because he just duct-taped Kokichi’s mouth. Because Saihara Shuichi, sweet, shy detective, duct-taped Kokichi up like a half rate kidnapper. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, wheezes, as he grabs at Kokichi’s hands, pushes him down. “I’m so sorry, Kokichi, I’m so sorry, it’s just till I tell Kaito-” 

And Kokichi really is angry now, because Shuichi is such a fucking idiot and he won’t even listen, won’t get it, and Kokichi hates him so much. Kokichi kicks him right in the gut, flips them over, clambers onto Shuichi’s hips and is about two seconds away from throttling him. Maybe if he chokes him out first, then he can remove the tape in peace-

The door to their bedroom opens.

Kokichi, hands around his roommate’s throat, mouth taped shut, sitting on his lap, looks up at the intruders. Shuichi looks over, too, with a rapidly-forming bruise on his face and blood smeared over his mouth, still stammering apologies.

“What the fuck is going on?” Momota asks, staring between them. Kokichi glares. Miu and Harukawa stand behind him, both looking like they’ve been recently woken up and are ready to kill.

Miu slams a hand to her mouth, turning a violent shade of pink. “W-Wah? I never thought Saihara would be… would be into something as sick as this!”

“Kokichi tried to kill himself!” Shuichi says quickly, snitch, liar, hypocrite. Kokichi sits up and punches him again. 

Immediately, idiot Momota rushes over and hauls him away, and unfortunately, idiot Momota is just strong enough to keep Kokichi from moving at all- holding him up like some kicking, untrained cat. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He says, holding him even tighter. “There’s no need for that, bud!”

Harukawa glances between him and Shuichi, her gaze dark. “Why was he attacking you?” She asks, like she thinks Shuichi is covering up for Kokichi’s dark deeds. Ha.

“Because I was trying to stop him,” Shuichi says, heaving out a breath. He reaches up to swipe the blood off the cut on his cheek, biting his lip as he does. He can’t look at Kokichi. Kokichi keeps staring at him, anyway, hoping Shuichi can tell just how angry he is.

“Kokichi!” Momota gives him a shake, like a misbehaving puppy. “You can’t just do something like that! Shuichi’s only trying to help you, man!”

 _He’s only trying to ruin me,_ Kokichi says, or tries to. What comes out is a lot of muffled, angry noises. Ha. If only Momota knew that he was killing Shuichi, trying to help like this. What will they all do, when they find out Shuichi is gone and they’re stuck with Kokichi forever? Ha ha. 

“Why is he… laughing?” Harukawa asks, looking thoroughly disturbed.

Miu rolls her eyes, looking much less interested now that she’s confirmed she didn’t walk in on some weird sex-roleplay. “He just does that sometimes when he’s feeling really unhinged. You probably shouldn’t take that tape off his mouth. He’ll say something super weird.”

“Ah- no!” Shuichi sits up, frantic, and he looks at Kokichi now, eyes filled with empathy. Kokichi looks away. “We can’t take it off at all- his forbidden action is that he can’t tell the truth. That’s why I put it on him… we can’t let him talk. S-sorry, Kokichi,” he adds, as if that’s anything.

The three intruders stare at him for a while. “Huh,” Momota says. “I thought you were being more of a dick than usual.”

At least Kokichi can still roll his eyes.

Harukawa is still staring at him distrustfully, glancing back to the marks all over Shuichi. Yeah, that’s fair. The things you do to save someone’s life, right?  
He hates this. He hates it so much.  
“Why was he trying to kill himself?” Harukawa asks, and he wants her to go away, wants her to leave him alone, wants them all to go- all of them except Shuichi. Everyone but Shuichi. Even now, even hating him beyond words, being more angry than human, he loves him still. Wants him. It’s not- it’s not fair. It’s not fair. 

When he looks back at Shuichi, he’s shaken by how quiet and sad the detective is, picking at the floor beneath him. “I… I think it’s part of another plan,” he murmurs. “I woke up and he was about to tell me something truthful, so we- so we fought.” A half-lie. Boring. Unskilled. Uninspired. Kokichi can think of at least three more that are more convincing.

He’s so useless like this. The only thing he has is his words, his brain, and he’s already had half of that stripped away with his stupid bangle, and now the tape? It’s insulting. It’s awful. He’s weak now, weak and pathetic, and he can’t- he can’t do anything to save Shuichi. They’ll never trust him enough to take off the tape.  
No, that’s not… that’s not right. There’s still time. He can still save Shuichi. More than one way to skin a Kokichi, right? He’ll find a way. He just needs one of his handlers to slip up for a second…. Or to dump himself in the way of one of those charming outsiders with their clearly murderous instincts. 

Momota and his murder girlfriend and backstabber Miu are all chatting curiously, asking Shuichi what the true thing Kokichi was saying was, if it seemed important, and Kokichi takes the opportunity to stare over at Shuichi, who stares back. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, as soon as the others look away.

 _It’s okay,_ Kokichi thinks. _It’s okay, I’ll save you._

\--

_Day five._

Things are… bad. Everyone is quiet and distrustful, concerned and wary. Kokichi is miserable, he’s miserable, Kaede can tell something’s up. It’s exactly what Shuichi had been hoping to avoid. He doesn’t know why he even thought he could hide something like this from Kokichi, but…

Kokichi. He’d been dragged off to sit under Maki and Kaito’s watch. Shuichi had wanted to go too, but apparently he’d been ‘mid panic attack’ and was ‘having considerable trouble breathing’ and Maki made him go back to bed and rest. Rest, slash lie awake all night and think about his roommate.

As soon as it was light enough to be considered morning, he was awake and rushing over to Maki’s room. She was clearly tired and cranky, but she greeted him gently, and he was able to walk with Kokichi to breakfast, where everyone realized Kokichi could neither eat nor drink, and Tsuji had made an off-color joke about IV drips and Kokichi had glared at everyone around him so intently that it had put them all off their food. 

Kokichi trailed around after everyone as they investigated, his hands cuffed behind him. Occasionally, he’d kick something to point it out, or make a series of noises until someone came over to look at what he’d found, but mostly, he was just… silent. Sullen and angry. It didn’t help that people kept asking him about his plan, that Shuichi kept finding ways to keep him from communicating with people. The whole thing was just… incredibly tense. Shuichi didn’t ever think he’d seen Kokichi this angry.  
Their investigation is a little fruitful, at least. Miu manages to talk Kiibo through opening up a set of files ahead of time, and they’re left staring at another set of planned motives- no food, a secret killer, blackout periods. They don’t seem to trigger, thankfully, but it looks as if they’re set for the next week. Shuichi thinks of his own NG code, of the timing of a week. His best guess is that… that’s when they want things to kick off. His death will make the others more paranoid, potentially resentful, and then more desperate motives are going to be put in place. Probably because these people can’t realistically expect to hide them for too long, so after a week they’ve got to stop waiting around for murders to happen organically. It’s a cynical thought process, sure. He isn’t super thrilled about it, but it looks to be the most likely option- which makes his time limit even more important. 

Shuichi does his best to investigate, to put Kokichi’s face out of his mind. The way Kokichi’s voice had gone so quiet, the way he’d cried, the anger in his eyes, the bitter laughter in his mouth, the taste of blood when Shuichi kissed him.

_Shuichi, I love-_

He shakes himself out of it, every time. Every time, the guilt gets worse. Every time, he wants to run over to Kokichi, to rip off the tape on his mouth and kiss him again, take him by his hands and promise it’ll all be okay. He wants to wake up at home and take him out, wants to cuddle closer while he’s sleeping, wants to tell him that it’s him, too, that he loves him just as much, that he’s not doing this out of survivor’s guilt or loyalty, but because he _loves_ him, because all he wants is for Kokichi to be okay.

But saying any of that would be cruel. He can’t tell Kokichi he loves him, only to go and die two days later. He can’t let them get closer, can’t let it hurt more. It’s why he stayed in his own room and lay in the dark, instead of following Kokichi to sit with Maki and Kaito. 

Shuichi investigates, instead. He makes the most of his time here, resolves to be as useful as he can. He draws up a layout of the entire building, copies out the list of file names and authors that Kiibo reads him, makes note of every carefully-positioned logo, gets Iruma to figure out the specifications of Kiibo’s laptop. Shuichi doublechecks for secret entrances and exits, paces over the basement over and over again, walks up to the dorms and inspects every false window, every crack under the bed, every wardrobe. Then he relooks at the floor plans. Then he plans ahead for every potential crime he can picture happening, and then he feels awful and Shirogane-esque, so he tears up that paper and rejoins the others in the dorms again. Well, tries to.

Tsuji and Iruma have disappeared somewhere to talk about potential methods of escape, looking furtive as they murmur to each other. Gonta has Kokichi with him, trying to cheer him up, and Hoshi’s with them, too- and he swore, very sternly, that he would not let Kokichi speak. Most of the class has gone downstairs for lunch. It seems as good a time as ever to do something awful.  
Shuichi stares at where Kaito stands across the room, peering at the bars on one of the fake-windows. He goes to scratch his wrist, remembers the tape there, and settles for picking the skin on the palm of his hand. He watches Kaito inspect the bars on the window for several minutes, until he manages to convince himself that it’s now or never.

It’s now or never.

He stands up.

“Ah, Kaito, can I talk to you?” Shuichi asks, biting his lip as he wanders over. He can’t go to Kaede with this. But Kaito… Kaito, he’ll get it, right?

Kaito immediately breaks into a grin, clapping a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder. “Sure, bro! What is it?”

“Ah, it’s.” He struggles to get the words out, his heart thudding. What if Kaito doesn’t respect his decision? What if Kaito wants to make sure Shuichi lives? No. No, Kaito wouldn’t do that. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. “It’s about Kokichi. You… you know how he’s trying to kill himself?”

“He’s still trying?” Kaito, for all his other lovable qualities, is a little oblivious sometimes. He looks like Shuichi’s just handed him a book proving that earth is flat.

“W-well, yeah, that’s what… that’s what suicidal people tend to do. But. Uh.” He coughs. “It’s not quite like that. I mean, he doesn’t really want to kill himself…”  
Kaito looks completely lost. Shuichi sighs, steels himself. “Look, it’s- it’s because of me.”

“What do you mean?” Kaito’s brow furrows. “What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Shuichi inhales. It’s now or never. “He saw my code.”

“Your- your code.” Kaito glances around them, despite them being in a completely empty room. Still, he puts a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder, expression grave, and guides him into the corner of the room, speaking quietly. “Shuichi, bro, what’s up? You’ve been shifty about your code since you got it.”

“Ha, yeah, well.” Shuichi shuts his eyes for a moment. “Kaito, you… you would do anything for Maki, right?”

Kaito blinks, his hand still on Shuichi’s shoulder. “Huh? I- yeah. Yeah, I would.” His expression softens a little, eyes drifting somewhere else. At the same time, his voice grows a little firmer. “Yeah. I’d do anything for her.”

Shuichi nods, fighting back the urge to scratch his wrist. He pinches it instead, tries to ease his anxiety with a bite of pain. “Well, it… Kaito, I’m not going to survive my code.” He bites his lip, scrapes his fingers over the tape on his wrist, lets out a breath, then finally meets his friend’s eyes- worry, protectiveness, argument. “My forbidden action is to end the week with Kokichi still alive. That’s why he’s trying to kill himself. Kaito, you can’t let him.”

Kaito’s pupils shrink, and he- for a moment, he looks like he’s choking. His eyes flit from Shuichi’s wrist to his face, back and forth, like he’s waiting for a punchline. “Shuichi…”

“I’m serious,” Shuichi insists. “Kaito, if- when something happens to me, you’ve got to look after him. He… He’ll feel guilty.” He has to squeeze his eyes shut again, has to do his best to ignore the images of Kokichi that flash through his mind- on top of him, eyes filled with tears, beneath him, angry and violent, to his side, melting in a kiss. How betrayed he’d looked. How afraid. 

“Shuichi, no, I..” Kaito steps back. “We’re gonna get you both out of this, okay? We’ll- we’ll just escape before the week is up. It’s fine! We can do it!”

“Sure, Kaito,” Shuichi murmurs, because he…. He doesn’t want to make it harder. “But- but if I don’t. Promise me that you’ll keep an eye on him, okay? It’s- it’s important to me.” He can’t look at Kaito. He remembers how hard it was to lose him- he doesn’t want him to have to go through the same thing. Shuichi digs his nails into his palms.

“Like Maki,” Kaito breathes. His voice is a little faint. Then, “holy shit.” Shuichi glances up, opens his eyes, and Kaito is reeling back, his face pale. “Holy shit,” he says, again. “You’re in love with Ouma.”

“I-” Shuichi feels himself turning red, despite the circumstances. “That’s not- that’s not important, Kaito, I need to know-”

“You’re in love with Ouma!” Kaito repeats, his voice raising. For a moment, there is a flash of elation across his face, and then it is doused with bitter sadness. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you-”

“I-it’s complicated,” Shuichi says, and at least that is honest. He bites his lip, rubs his arm anxiously. “I… I was going to. Eventually. It’s just… we’re both guys, and- and-”

Both hands are on his shoulders now. Kaito is looking at him intensely. “Bro,” he says. “You’re willing to die for the guy. What the fuck does it matter if you both have- dicks, or- or whatever. That’s not important! You’re important, he’s- we’re going to get you two out of here.”

Shuichi laughs, a little desperately, because the whole conversation is not at all what he planned and far too bizarre. “He might not forgive me even if we do get out. I…. he’s pretty mad,” Shuichi says, and he’s struck with a sudden pain. What if they get out and it’s different? What if Kokichi really does hate him now? What if all that fighting, that wasn’t just desperation for him to live but… but resentment? What if they get out and Kokichi decides he needs space?

“You’re trying to save his life,” Kaito says, and his voice has dropped into something comforting that Shuichi didn’t even know he was capable of. “Bro. Shuichi. You’ll be fine. You two- we’ll get you out of here, and then you can go and sweep him off his feet, okay?” Kaito beams, gives him a thumbs up, and it… it would be so easy to believe him, to go along with it, to focus on some potential hopeful and avoid the need to plan now.

Shuichi takes a breath. “We’ll do our best, Kaito,” he murmurs. “But- if something does happen… anything at all, please just… please make sure he’s okay.” He bites his lip. “Like you would want someone to do for Maki.”

Kaito stares at him for a long moment. Slowly, the other hand on his shoulder slips off, and Kaito’s expression is completely sober. “Shuichi,” he says, his gaze intent and earnest. “I promise that I… I respect your decision to protect him. And if anything happens, I’ll look after him, alright? Me and Kaede, and… maybe not Maki. But he’s got Iruma and Gonta, too. There’ll be people for him. We’ll make sure he’s okay.”

Shuichi nods, and his throat is all tight and aching. “And you, too, Kaito,” he murmurs. “Make sure you all look after each other.”

Kaito hesitates for a moment, then curses under his breath and drags Shuichi into a hug. He feels like a big brother, like someone you can trust, like everything’s going to be okay. He smells of oranges and hair gel. “We’ll be fine, bro,” he murmurs. “Ouma, too. We’ll all be fine. Just… look after yourself, okay?”

Shuichi nods. It’s a lie. He’s got two days left to get them out of here, or it won’t matter.

\--

_Day six._

Everything is absolutely awful, but Kokichi has managed to exhaust himself of the majority of his anger, at least. Now he’s just nice and exhausted and desperate. That said- he’s still plenty angry, but that’s better than being sad. There’s no need to be sad. He’s come to terms with his own death, knows it’s coming tomorrow, tonight, whenever he can get there. He won’t try anything desperate until tomorrow, but he won’t let Shuichi die. 

Nobody seems too eager to babysit him- Shuichi is, but Kokichi always glares until he fucks off. He doesn’t need the one person who’s actively trying to hinder his attempts at communication around while he tries to get to the others. Momota is frustratingly steadfast, no matter how Kokichi hints to him, and Gonta is too worried about Kokichi’s mental health to let his guard down. It’s so frustrating. Any one of them would do the same thing in his shoes- any one of them would prefer he died. And he can’t blame them, either- Shuichi is obviously more important to keep alive. There’s a reason Kokichi didn’t drag him to the hangar the first time around.  
(Of course, things are different now, but that doesn’t matter.)

He’d tried to figure out what Miu was working on, but she’d informed him she didn’t need help from a suicidal baby and slammed the door in his face. She probably doesn’t trust him anymore. Ha. How nice, watching their friendship dissolve when put under too much pressure. Who’s fault is it? Hers, for being a filthy backstabber, or his, for being a manipulative bitch? Trick question, it’s the mastermind’s fault. It’s so easy, isn’t it, to shove all their bad behaviour under that lens.

So, Kokichi sits in the lobby of the dorm rooms with Chabashira mostly ignoring him, and he thinks. He thinks a lot, and he listens in to other conversations, and he recaps all their previous information. After about two hours of excruciatingly being left with only his thoughts, he’s developed a few theories about their containment- none of which he likes. But theories lead into plans, and even if these are increasingly desperate plans, he’s sure it’ll be okay. He just needs to leave enough pieces for Shuichi to follow.

There’s a scream from downstairs. Chabashira starts, glances around wildly. Kokichi blinks up at her innocently. A few seconds later, the door to Miu’s room is kicked open, and she marches out and grabs him by the collar. Miu has an oddly grim look on her face- not that he can blame her. No sudden shriek here is a good sign. 

Kokichi gets hauled downstairs by Miu and Chabashira, until they all stop in front of one of the classrooms. Most of the others have reached there already- Kokichi catches Shuichi’s eye and can’t miss the relief in the detective’s face, seeing that he’s okay. It’s the same relief that shows every time they meet after being apart. It hurts just as much now.

Akamatsu steps out of the classroom, her face blank. She scans the crowd, until her eyes land on Oshiro- ultimate composer, standing with her hands clasped together.  
Akamatsu’s expression crumples. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “It’s Tsuji.”

Kokichi watches Oshiro’s expression with interest. If Tsuji is dead, that makes her the last one from another season… the last outsider. Kinda funny that even Shirogane managed to outlive them. He guesses that the rest of them probably come off too strongly as a group- pack mentality. Harder to take out someone that has thirteen other people who have been with them for a year. Plus Kiibo, he guesses. Would smashing that laptop count as a murder?  
Oshiro dips her head, respectfully, but her face is tight- anger, sadness? Both? It’s a predictable reaction. Every stranger’s death hits like a friends, here. “Was it their code?” She asks softly.

“I… I don’t know,” Akamatsu says. She’s holding the door shut behind her, expression twisted up. “We… we could check, I guess-”

“Their code said they couldn’t come into contact with blood,” Shuichi says quietly. Kokichi looks back to him, but Shuichi is just staring straight ahead. “It was designed to stop them from assisting us.”

“Cruel limitation on the ultimate paramedic,” Hoshi mutters.

Akamatsu bites her lip. “If… if anyone wants to look, I guess…” She steps out, quickly. “I didn’t look too close, but it- it doesn’t seem like a murder.” 

Shuichi walks over to the door. Oshiro follows. After a moment, Miu does, too.  
Kokichi remains a few steps behind them as they enter the room.  
Tsuji Michi’s body is leaned up against the counter, almost tenderly. Their glasses and mask are off, dropped on the floor, and there’s something like a smile on their face- not pleased, but peaceful, even as blood drips from their mouth. Their gloves are off, hands bare, and red beads between their index and middle knuckles. Their eyes are closed. Around them, medical equipment and machines sit, whirring away. 

Shuichi kneels by the body, frowning over it for a moment. He glances back up, something faraway in his eyes. “The code is activated,” he says quietly, gesturing down to their hand. “I… I don’t know if it was an accident or on purpose, but…”

“Could be both,” Oshiro says, twisting her hands together. Her expression is a little lost, too. “Tsuji… I didn’t know much of them, but they were dedicated to their work. Perhaps, after losing Aya-chan, they were… hasty, with their efforts.”

“Where did all the medical equipment come from?” Akamatsu asks, from the doorway.

Miu shifts uncomfortably next to him, her voice low. “Me and ‘em, we were… we were working on some stuff, I guess. My code doesn’t let me build shit, and theirs doesn’t let ‘em help, so…. I guided them through making some stuff, and they did some stuff for me in return, too.” She twists a strand of hair between her fingers, staring at the body with a surprisingly distraught expression. “Dumbass,” she whispers. 

Shuichi stands up, inspecting the vials and wires around them. “There’s a… an impressive array of things here,” he murmurs. “They managed to get together a lot… a lot of equipment.”

“You’re welcome,” Miu mutters, but without her usual over-the-top bravado. She casts a glance to Kokichi, suddenly, and points at the body, scowling. “You better not try that shit, okay? Because I’ll chase you to the afterlife just to kick your ass.”

He waggles his eyebrows at her. She grits her teeth.

They head out to rejoin the others, and Shuichi tells them what they found, quietly. Immediately, Oshiro and Kaede decide they need to move the body, do something important with it- some kind of memorial. They can’t just leave it there for the masterminds to take, right! Ha. They’re already dead, what’s it matter?  
The others all mill around, talking about funeral options, memorials for a person they barely know. It’s so… useless, so antithetical to any kind of productive plan, that it drives Kokichi crazy.

He goes over to stand by Shuichi. He doesn’t- He doesn’t want to. He’s still angry. He’s still so angry. But Shuichi’s looking so lost, so confused, and he just…. He can’t leave him. Kokichi walks over and touches his arm gently. 

Shuichi looks back at him and just… something in him looks like it’s breaking. It’s hard to look at, but Kokichi can’t pull away. Shuichi hesitates, then bites his lip, then turns away, anyway.  
What’s the point?

Kokichi watches him walk down the corridor. One bitter part of him tells him to leave it- that maybe if he acts cruel enough, Shuichi will give up on this desperate bid for his life. The rest of him can’t bear thinking about leaving him alone.

He follows him out, makes a sound in his throat. Shuichi turns, and looks- surprised, and pained, and guilty, all at once. “H-hey, Kokichi,” he stutters, and Kokichi is suddenly struck by how… how bad he looks, how tired and sad he is. He probably didn’t sleep at all last night.

Kokichi waves with one hand. The other dangles uselessly next to it.

Shuichi winces as he looks at him. Ha. Kokichi hopes he enjoys that guilt. Not really. He’s drained of all his earlier fury. Now he’s just… tired. He misses Shuichi, hates that he misses him, hates how codependent he feels for wanting to be near him, hates thinking that this might be his future- mouth bound, hands tied, wishing Shuichi was there.

Kokichi twists his arms around over his head, then sticks his hands out, jangling the cuffs. Shuichi stares at him, a little nervously. “I don’t…”  
Kokichi rattles them more insistently. He jerks his head toward the pen sticking out of Shuichi’s breast pocket.

The detective glances down, and then his eyes light up. “Oh!” He pulls it out, then hesitates. “Um, I don’t have any paper?”

Kokichi sighs. This feels like their awkward, hesitant conversations right back in the simulation. He grabs Shuichi’s wrist- the right one, not the one covered in duct tape- and yanks his sleeve up, pointing at the skin there.

Shuichi stares at him for a moment, then holds out the pen. Kokichi takes it.

He spends a moment thinking about what he wants to write. To plead with Shuichi, maybe. To bargain. Take the tape off, and Kokichi will only do it on the last day. To ask why he thinks this is- better for him, why he’s so determined to give Kokichi a life he doesn’t want. To just vent out his feelings all over Shuichi’s skin, the pen scratching in like Shuichi’s own nails do. Anger, and sadness, and- and more, things he’s so scared to confess.

I DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE LAST NIGHT OF MAYBE ONE OF OUR LIVES SLEEPING LIKE A COUPLE JUST BEFORE A MUCH-NEEDED DIVORCE, he scrawls over the arm.

Shuichi lifts his arm, turns it over, and reads it. He laughs, softly, when he finishes, and Kokichi hates how normal it seems. When Shuichi looks up from the arm, his smile fades. “You’re still angry,” he says quietly.

Yeah, obviously!! What, did he expect him to be all over it now? Kokichi holds out a hand for the other arm. Shuichi pushes up his sleeve, almost hesitantly, and offers out his arm. Kokichi takes it. (He’d take anything this stupid boy gives him. Almost anything.)

OBVIOUSLY. BUT he pauses, tapping his pen on the skin. He can feel his face heating up, hates it, focuses more on his anger to get over the stupidly flustered parts of him. I DON’T WANT TO another pause, as he rearranges his thoughts, HAVE REGRETS LATER. There. That’s nice and neutral. Doesn’t sound too much like he still plans on killing himself.

Shuichi, reading over his shoulder, bites his lip. “Okay,” he says, his voice all soft. “I… me too, Kokichi.” The detective shuts his eyes for a moment. “I don’t want to- to go without spending as much time with you as I can. But I also… I don’t want to hurt you.” He pauses, looks at Kokichi, and his expression is so- so sweet, so sheepish, like a schoolboy caught lying to his crush. “Okay, I guess… I guess, I don’t want to hurt you more than I will.”  
A hand comes up to Kokichi’s cheek, cups it gently, tilts his chin up to Shuichi’s face. “You know… you know I. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think you could get through it, right? You’re so strong, Kokichi, you’ve gotten through so much. If something h-happens to me- you’ll have Gonta and Iruma, and… and Kaito, if you want him, and Kaede will be there for you-”

He squeaks as Kokichi yanks on his arm, shoves the sleeve up past his elbow and starts scrawling over him, angrily. THEY’RE NOT YOU.

Shuichi stares down at the words, too long, and Kokichi knows he knows he’s a hypocrite, that Shuichi feels the same way he does, that he’s a coward, that he’s weak, that he knows that Kokichi losing him will be worse than- than anything else, that could ever happen. “Kokichi,” he says quietly, “I… I know you can do it. I know you’ll be fine. Because- because you didn’t think you would be after the simulation, right? And you still were. You were- you’re so great, Kokichi.” His fingers close around Kokichi’s cheek, and he has to resist the urge to let his eyes flutter shut. 

Only because of you, Kokichi thinks but doesn’t write, because he’s not in the mood for a conversation that goes in circles in the middle of the hallway. Instead, he writes LET’S GO TO BED.

They do.

They go back to their room, and it’s so- it’s so relieving, god. He hadn’t realized how much he’d started thinking of it as ‘their room’, how much being dragged away and watched by Harukawa had drained him. Kokichi flops down on his side, on the bed, their bed, and Shuichi flops next to him, and he reaches out and nudges their fingers together, and Kokichi. Kokichi can’t resist, so he closes his eyes and lifts his fingers and locks their hands together. They lay there, quietly, just breathing. 

One hand slips away from his. Before he can reach out again, it comes up to feather through his hair, tugging sweetly. Kokichi feels like he might cry.

“I’ve got another pen if you want to write more,” Shuichi murmurs. “I know… I know it must be hard for you. Kokichi, I am so, so sorry.” 

Maybe Shuichi will fall asleep first, and then Kokichi can rip off the tape. For the moment, he’s… he’s just going to build trust. He’s going to make Shuichi drop his guard.  
He takes the offered pen. Scrawls TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT in big block letters over Shuichi’s knuckles. 

The detective flushes, but obeys, pulling off his jacket and letting it fall to the floor. There are a few bandages on his shoulders and chest, a bruise in the center of his stomach. Kokichi stares at the injuries, and he hates himself, hates how he made Shuichi hurt, hates how he never learns how to save people without hurting them.

“Hey,” Shuichi says, softly. “It’s okay. We both got pretty rough.”

Kokichi snorts. He’d make some kind of lewd comment here, but he’s too busy looking for somewhere Shuichi will be able to read. He settles for his stomach, twisting his head, writing the characters upside down so Shuichi can look down on it.  
Shuichi laughs, softly, complains about it tickling, but he stays still as Kokichi pauses and resumes, strays from his sentence to doodle pictures and then come back to it. 

TELL ME SOMETHING NICE, SHUMAI.

“Something nice?” Shuichi echoes, staring down at the words on his barely-convex belly. “Um.” He tips his head back for a moment, looks up at their imitation ceiling. “We’re making progress. I’ve found some really interesting things in Kiibo’s files, I wanted to talk to you about it, actually-”

Kokichi’s already writing on his waist before he can finish speaking. NOT ABOUT THE GAME. 

Shuichi pauses for a moment, before he closes his eyes, and swings right into a story like he’d never stopped speaking. Like he’d expected this, somehow. “I, ah…. While I was looking around today, I noticed all the plants growing here. And I… I was feeling really low. I missed you a lot. But I was looking around, and I see all these plants around us. A-and they’re not the same plants as in the simulation, but they’re- they’re there, mostly moss and ferns and vines and things, and they’re probably pests, but they’re… they’re growing.”

THAT _IS_ WHAT PLANTS DO. The pen trails over his skin so lazily. 

Shuichi’s laughter comes out in a breath. He slumps sideways, so he and Kokichi are lying together, parallel lines. Never properly meeting, never converging. Running together the whole time, despite it all. “They’re growing, even in this awful place, with its… fake windows, and no natural light, and nobody watering them. And then I thought about all the plants we have at home, and how… sad I felt, thinking about how they had nobody to water them. But these plants…” His voice is growing a little distant now, drifting his fingers through the blanket. “These plants are growing, despite everything. Even with everything, these plants are so growing. And… and so, I just thought… therefore…”

THEREFORE?

“Therefore,” Shuichi repeats, staring down at the characters doodled onto his chest. “Therefore, you and me.”

Kokichi smiles, behind his tape. YOU AND ME, YOU AND ME. LOVEY-DOVEY!

“Lovey-dovey,” Shuichi murmurs, laughing softly. Then his smile droops, his expression all sad. “Kokichi,” he says, softly. 

YOU ALWAYS SAY MY NAME LIKE THAT. The pen doesn’t tremble in his hand at all. Kokichi is very present. 

“Like what?”

He swallows. Bites his lip. Moves the pen in a slow scrawl, barely readable. LIKE IT HURTS YOU. 

Shuichi is silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

DOES IT? 

A heavy sigh. Shuichi folds up, like a ball, origami hands and legs tucking up tight. “Kokichi,” he says, says it just the same way, like somewhere between the _ki_ and the _chi_ he loses his breath. “I don’t… I don’t want to- to make you feel worse.”

Kokichi makes a grab for his arm, puts the pen to skin. 

“Yes,” Shuichi says, before he can even start writing. “It hurts. Saying your name. Because it… it reminds me that I still have so much to say to you. Because it makes me think of you.”

Kokichi bites his lip. Rolls Shuichi’s name around in his mouth, doesn’t say it, can’t, but feels it. _Sh,_ soft breath of air between his teeth, _u,_ long and floating through his throat, _i,_ high, breaking, cracking in his voice. 

SHUICHI, he writes. 

Shuichi’s fingers brush over the words on his shoulder, curl up there like he’s trying to cling to it. “Kokichi,” he whispers, and just hearing his name is somehow the most intimate thing he’s ever experienced. Kokichi shudders, grips the pen tight as anything. _Shuichi_ echoes in his closed mouth. Shuichi reaches out, strokes his fingers through his hair again, and they’re so close. So close. “Please forgive me,” Shuichi whispers. “For everything.” 

Kokichi closes his eyes. He won’t let Shuichi die. And he won’t die angry, either. He’ll die happy, knowing he could save… whoever Shuichi is to him. It doesn’t matter. Shuichi is important, no matter where Kokichi stands in relation to him. Shuichi is… he’s Shuichi. Kokichi thinks, bitterly, that it was impossible to avoid falling for him.  
That didn’t stop him trying, though. That didn’t stop him digging his feet into the dirt and putting up walls that Shuichi just kept finding ways through, stumbling around like an idiot and trampling over Kokichi’s heart. He tried so hard, and look where it got them. Still just as… emotional, just as stupid, and they’re stuck here and the confession Kokichi has been hiding from ever since he realized that his feelings for Shuichi went a little bit deeper than _friend who I sometimes indulge in fantasies about-_ that will be the last thing he ever says. 

They could have had more. They could’ve been really good. 

Why is it Kokichi’s name on Shuichi’s arm? Because they’re roommates? Because they got a little too close out in public? Because some unnamed, watching loser decided they weren’t playing the right roles? Maybe they just wanted to ensure that at least one of them would die. Maybe they wanted to hurt Shuichi. Maybe they wanted to hurt him. 

Kokichi bites his lip. He looks up at the monitor hanging in their room, the one that definitely doubles as a camera. He has a pen in his hand. He’s pretty sure he can do one thing, at least, before he goes. He can at least assuage this one major regret, this one disappointment he’s carried since he woke up from the simulation.

Kokichi leans down, blocks the monitor’s view of Shuichi’s arm, and begins to write on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WAH i cant BELIEVE how many of you guessed the “i love you” part. My carefully laid plans! Just kidding, as a writer its soooo good to see people seeing the same vision you do. I just hope i carried it off well enough! I know a lot of you were expecting… instant ouma death. But no! You have to wait a little longer to see how it ends for them :)
> 
> (btw, you can thank platanosandprejudice for the kiss! They bribed me. So you’re welcome! I hope it was fluffy enough. haha.)


	13. forever, forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shuichi returns to their room. He showers. He scrubs off Kokichi’s words, every one, just in case. He exits. He dresses. He looks around the room and packs up a spare uniform for Kokichi, one for himself, tries to make the space a little neater. This was Kokichi’s room originally, so… so he should be able to come back to it. Shuichi spends a moment wondering if it would be easier if he erased any symbol of his presence. He thinks about if it were him, if it were Kokichi dying. It would hurt to come back and find his clothes. It would hurt to come back and find nothing. 
> 
> There’s no way to improve it. Shuichi sinks to his knees, pushes his hands through his hair. Everything about this is the worst. Ironic, mocking, smiling theater masks watching as tears drip down his face.
> 
> It’s the last day. His last day. And he’s spending it in a prison, with his… with his most important person unable to speak. Restrained. Hurting. And it’s his fault. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! God im sorry this took me so long. I have no real excuse except that i had a really hard time with this chapter, and i didn’t feel good about my writing in it for quite a while. I had a few days where i was like ‘do i want to upload something im not happy with just to get it out?’ and then i remembered that the reason it was so hard was that this was an Important chapter and i wanted it to be Good. so I kept working and it took me a while, but now i feel a bit better about it? i mean, its still not what i pictured but. hhh its been a whole week now!! and i left things on such a tense moment!!!!!!!!! i feel very bad about leaving these boys in such a cliffhanger. i cant leave them any longer!!!!  
> There are some bits that don’t hit as hard as i would like, but i think it’s something i can feel okay about putting out.

_Every piece of paperwork is signed. Every letter turned in, every file completed. He’s given up his medical history, his school results, sat patiently and thoughtfully through every test they’ve subjected him to. He’s handed in his character’s name and backstory. He has done his best to be polite, and soft-spoken, and gentle, through all the interviews. He thinks of everything they call him in school. He does his best to avoid being that. But no matter what he does, he thinks he always comes off a little creepy. Maybe it’s the eyes. Maybe it’s the hat._

_“Why do you want to join Danganronpa?”_

_“I’ve just… I’ve always been such a huge fan of Danganronpa, and…” A pause. “I always wanted to be in one.”_

_He’s always wanted to be in one. Ever since he was thirteen and in a foster home, his parents’ deaths still written all over his face, and one of the older kids had ushered him over and shown him something cool. It’s a stupid, simple reason to give. If he tells them the truth he’ll come off crazy- or worse, pitiable._

_“If I were a contestant, I would wanna be….an ultimate detective!” Talent. Brains and wit and a goal. Something to do. Something to find. Something to strive for. Some sort of passion to drive through him, make him want to solve things. To make things worth living._ _  
__Ultimate detectives are always good. If they cast him, he’ll probably be the first to be bad, because he is- right to the core. It runs in his blood, like death, like loneliness. His family have all lived short, violent lives. His parents thought he might escape it- thought he was clever enough to get further, like they did, make it to university and then to a job and then to someone he loved. And then their blood had caught up to them, caught up to him, soaked into his fluffy socks as his uncle stared at him._

_He thinks of his parents, who loved him. He thinks of his uncle, who loved him, too. He thinks of the only other person to love him, just a few rooms away, probably lying his face off, talking himself up and never knowing all the while that what he says is true, that he really is as clever as he claims to be, as inventive, as bold, as wonderful._

_“I know that ultimate detectives, like the lucky students, have already been done… at their best, really. I know I won’t be the next Kirigiri.” He wouldn’t want to even try- Kirigiri is such a strong comfort character that even thinking about comparing himself to her makes him sick. She’s so good. She’s everything he’s not. “But… I’ve watched every season, and I’ve never seen an ultimate detective at their worst. My planned character- he is observant and clever, but he is also cowardly. He’s easily peer pressured. He’s distrusting but codependent. Maybe he could grow into something good- maybe he could snap. But I’m sure that he wouldn’t be just another sidekick leading the protagonist. I think writing an ultimate detective who really depends on the people around him would be an interesting twist.”_ _  
__Is he explaining himself well? Does he sound normal? Does he sound too normal? Is he boring, is he insane, is he too self-deprecating or too proud?_

_He lifts his chin, looks right into the camera. “But I’ll do anything to be a part of Danganronpa. Anything.”_

_He rambles a little more in the audition. He’s sure he comes off desperate, but maybe that works. They always like to throw in a psycho or two. When he leaves, he finds his best friend already waiting, and the air around them is empty. Fizzled out._

_They link their pinkies as they walk home. He wonders what it would be like to be good._

\--

_Day seven._

It’s the last day. It’s the last day. Shuichi wakes up, curled around Kokichi, and his first thought is _he’s here?_ and his second is because it’s the last day.

Kokichi is already awake, lying with his hands cuffed behind his back, tape on his mouth. He’s watching Shuichi’s face, the sort of idle innocence in his expression that tells Shuichi that he woke up five minutes ago and spent the whole time wondering how to wriggle his arms up to his mouth without waking Shuichi. 

“Hey,” Shuichi mumbles, shuffling back to give him a little more space. “Are you alright? Do you want me to…” He biteshis lip. “Help your arms? That can’t be comfortable…”

Kokichi gives him a very flat look. Then he sits up and, without too much trouble, gets his arms twisted in front of him, his elbows bent awkwardly. 

“Yeah, sorry.” Shuichi sits up and rubs his eyes, then fumbles around for a key. He takes the cuffs in hand, and then pauses, looking up at Kokichi. “You’re not going to… try and kill yourself again?”

Kokichi scowls even harder. He shakes his wrists. 

Shuichi sighs, and slots in the key. They unlock fairly easily (Miu had boasted about that, when she provided them. Easy to unlock for emergencies, but they’ll hold someone tight. Shuichi doesn’t want to know.) and Kokichi immediately loses some tension, shaking out his hands and rubbing down his arms. Shuichi watches him, too anxious to be adoring, too concerned to be anything less. “Do you want a pen?” He asks softly, and immediately offers one out when Kokichi nods. He knows that communication is important to Kokichi- that a lot of his perceived power comes from his ability to manipulate events around himself. That removing Kokichi’s ability to tell the truth, reducing him to lies, had had a very negative effect on him. The code was cruel.  
Shuichi restraining him like this is crueler still.

Kokichi pats down his chest, looking for somewhere that isn’t covered in ink, and Shuichi becomes very aware of how shirtless and in bed he is. He has to look away as Kokichi takes him by the elbow and begins scrawling, scratching into the skin just above his forearm.

SEVENTH DAY, HUH?

Shuichi stares at the words, how simple and unassuming they are. He smiles despite himself, closes his eyes like he’s imprinting them into his brain. “They say seven is a lucky number.”

Kokichi is careful with the pen, tracing it up to his shoulder, one hand cupping the skin, the other writing over it in slow, feathery beats. The words come out angled, a little foggy, written for Shuichi’s benefit.

FOR WHO?

All these conversations had one line at a time- half of them painted over Shuichi’s skin. If you looked at his arms, you’d read half their first conversation, then their ninth, then their third, then their fifteenth. So many half-finished dialogues, no discernable order except that they’re on him, soaking his body in their meaninglessness.

Shuichi’s left hand comes up to his shoulder, thumb brushing against the bone. “Witches?” he asks, jokingly. His voice comes out so weakly, like he’s trying to match Kokichi’s resentful silence.

Kokichi huffs, softly, and Shuichi can feel his breath against his arm. SHUICHI. 

His heart sinks. He swallows, traces his teeth with his tongue. “Kokichi?” 

I REALLY DON’T MIND DYING. Kokichi’s fingers tremble, just a bit, as he finishes the words.

“I do,” Shuichi says, as the world dissolves into violin strings around him. “I would mind.”

Kokichi looks torn, for just a moment, before his gaze hardens. He shifts down Shuichi’s arm, moves into the inner corner of his shoulder, crook of his arm. I’VE a pause. ALREADY DONE IT ONCE.

“And you should never have to do it again,” Shuichi hisses, like he can physically stop Kokichi from dying, like he can find time or death or whatever takes him away and seal them away from him. 

I DESERVE IT MORE THAN YOU. Shuichi starts to protest that, but Kokichi silences him, shifts up to write, upside-down, over his collar bone. YOU’RE IMPORTANT TO THE GROUP. YOU’RE CLEVER. YOU’RE DOING GOOD WORK. I AM STILL A VILLAIN, SHUICHI. 

“But that’s not right,” Shuichi whispers, tracing the words with a finger tip. “Because…. Because you chose to save us. It’s…” He blows out a breath, closing his eyes. “It’s so stupid how we’ve ended up here again. And I hate how you, and all your boldness… I’m sorry nobody is listening to you. It doesn’t mean they hate you.” He bites his lip. “I’m sorry you feel like a ghost.”

Kokichi inhales so sharply that Shuichi can hear it from behind the duct tape. The pen twitches against his skin. There’s a pause, and then he starts writing so quickly and intensely that it hurts a little, the way the pen is digging into his skin. 

BUT IT’S FINE, he writes. DON’T JUST ACT LIKE IT’S ALL TERRIBLE, OR THAT I DON’T DESERVE IT. BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WANT TO REPENT, RIGHT? AND HOW DO YOU THINK I FEEL? THAT’S NO REAL ARGUMENT, WHICH ONE OF US DID RIGHT OR WRONG. WE BOTH LOSE. I DON’T MIND DYING, SHUICHI. BECAUSE IN THE END OF IT...

Kokichi pauses, tapping the end of the pen into his skin, drawing over the same dot again and again. Shuichi sees something like a smile behind his eyes. I AND MYSELF, WE’RE ALL GHOSTS. So many lives in those eyes. _Kokichi,_ who he falls asleep with, who brings him home iced tea. _Ouma,_ from the game- commanding, intelligent, two steps beyond him every time. _Phantom thief,_ fantasized, larger than life, a troupe of loyal clowns tumbling after him to the very edge of the earth. Someone else before all of that- maybe he can see them there, too, haunting the corners of Kokichi’s face.

“Kokichi-”

VERY SELFISH GHOSTS.  
Kokichi drops the pen and stares at him. There is still something wry in his eyes- mystical, foxlike. Some sort of lingering death that curls around him, even now. Shuichi can only stare back, entranced, as he reaches down for a different pen and begins to write again. 

I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE. In red, this time, pressed against the bone on the side of his wrist. 

“I don’t want you to die, either,” Shuichi murmurs.

Kokichi’s brow furrows. THEN I SUPPOSE WE ARE AT AN IMPASSE. 

Shuichi bites his lip. He’d been hoping that… he didn’t know. Maybe they could come to some kind of agreement, share some sort of comfort. Now it just feels like they’ve taken three steps back to the very beginning. “Kokichi,” he starts, and then stops. “Kokichi, the… we’ve only seen one person die by the codes. Maybe I’ll survive.” He thinks of Tsuji, the fever on their face, the peaceful expression, blood dripping from their mouth. How hard they had tried.

OR MAYBE I WILL. WORTH A TRY, RIGHT? Kokichi, unsmiling, grinning, sober, drunken, shifting. Kokichi with the unreadable eyes. 

Shuichi shakes his head, suddenly more determined than before. “No. No, I won’t let you die. I won’t let- I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Not again. Not when I can help it.” Hydraulic presses and blood drip through his mind. Their last conversation. A thank you. Kokichi, who looked so sweet even when he informed them that nothing mattered anymore. That body, unrecognizable under the press, and how, for a second, he’d just… he’d looked at the blood and he’d thought _Ouma?_

Shuichi moves to stand up, but Kokichi grabs his wrist again, turning it over furiously for a bit of blank skin. He settles for the palm of his hand, and Shuichi starts to protest because people will see, but Kokichi just writes harder, his eyes narrowed. 

DON’T LET YOUR GUILT STEAL YOUR LIFE, SHUICHI.

“Guilt-” Shuichi stares at it, then back up to the ghost still holding his hand. “Do you really think that’s all this is? Kokichi, it’s- it’s you.” He bites his lip, and suddenly intense anxiety and intense adoration battle in him, as he looks at Kokichi, still sitting on the bed, eyes still private. Walls still up.  
Shuichi forces himself to turn away. He can’t make this hurt anymore than it will. He can’t offer Kokichi something that won’t last. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it feels stiff, pointless, useless. There is nothing to say here. 

Detectives are only useful when it’s too late. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” he says, quietly. “Um…” 

Kokichi allows himself to be cuffed again without too much trouble, which makes Shuichi uneasy, and he ends up dragging the ultimate leader over to Kaito’s room. The two of them share a glance as Shuichi apologizes, both to him and to Kokichi, and Kaito’s face is all grim acceptance.

Shuichi returns to their room. He showers. He scrubs off Kokichi’s words, every one, just in case. He exits. He dresses. He looks around the room and packs up a spare uniform for Kokichi, one for himself, tries to make the space a little neater. This was Kokichi’s room originally, so… so he should be able to come back to it. Shuichi spends a moment wondering if it would be easier if he erased any symbol of his presence. He thinks about if it were him, if it were Kokichi dying. It would hurt to come back and find his clothes. It would hurt to come back and find nothing. 

There’s no way to improve it. Shuichi sinks to his knees, pushes his hands through his hair. Everything about this is the worst. Ironic, mocking, smiling theater masks watching as tears drip down his face.

It’s the last day. His last day. And he’s spending it in a prison, with his… with his most important person unable to speak. Restrained. Hurting. And it’s his fault. 

(The worst part, worst by far, is he can’t stop thinking about it. If Kokichi had succeeded. If Kokichi were to die. He knows that nothing would make it better. He knows that it would hurt more than anything. He knows that him choosing to die himself isn’t noble. He’s just passing all that hurt off to Kokichi.  
It’s still the right thing to do, right? Kokichi can move past it. He will. He’s smart, and clever, and determined, and he’ll do anything to bring down Danganronpa. Kokichi can heal. He’s done it before. No matter how much it hurts, he’ll survive. That’s why…. That’s why it’s okay that Shuichi is leaving him. Doing something too awful to bear. Kokichi will be okay.) 

Shuichi leaves the room as it is. Instead he changes the bandages on his left wrist, reapplies the tape over them, and leaves. He meets the others down at breakfast, and for a moment he isn’t sure where to sit, when Kokichi, sitting by Kaito and staring at him, shuffles over slightly. An invitation.

Shuichi sits down next to him. Asks if he’s hungry. Kokichi scowls. The others laugh, and when he rolls his eyes dramatically, Shuichi lets a chuckle slip from his own mouth. Kokichi seems… not pleased, but a little mollified by that. He drinks two glasses of water with only minor struggle. Eating, though, makes him attempt to speak a few times, until Maki grows sick of it and shoves a piece of fruit in his mouth and tapes it shut again. Shuichi apologizes so much that the others start laughing again, and he knows that Kokichi would think it was funny, too, if things weren’t so different. If the stakes weren’t so high.  
Halfway through the meal, Kokichi, sitting quietly and clearly bored, leans his head on Shuichi’s shoulder. Shuichi almost chokes, but manages to swallow alright. He glances about carefully, then slips a hand around Kokichi’s waist. It’s okay, right? He’s just comforting him. 

“How sweet,” Oshiro murmurs. 

Kaede glances over, at that, and gives Shuichi an encouraging smile that makes him feel so guilty he could die right there. It’s like she’s proud of him, like he’s making progress with a- with a crush, or something. It makes him so hopeful and excited that he immediately has to douse them with further shame, to look away. It’s not fair. Not on anyone. 

The meal continues. He makes quiet conversation. He tries to enjoy it as much as he can, while still keeping a layer of gauze over his actions- a cover on the cake, something to keep the flies away, keep it sweet. He’s got to make it easier for them all when he goes.  
Because it’s the last day. And at this point, Shuichi has accepted that he’s not getting out. 

“Guys,” he says softly, as they’re all packing up, and it pangs, how they all look to him, a mix of hope and friendship and fond admiration. “Um. I think- from what Kiibo’s shown us, things will start getting really… rough tomorrow, with all the new motives scheduled and things.” 

On the table, Kiibo’s bobbing head makes a little chirping melody as he nods. Everyone laughs. 

Kokichi’s fingers curl into Shuichi’s shirt. 

“So. Um. I think today, we should really focus on reaching the outside world- looking at the computer upstairs, the monitors, things like that. But, if it’s ok, I’d like to make one last sweep, myself. Just to see if there’s anything we’ve missed.” 

“Course, Shuichi,” Kaito says, and the determination and love on his face is like being crushed. “You check wherever you like, and we’ll all see what we can do! Kiibo can help us!”

Kiibo nods again, his eyes sparking with enthusiasm. “I am sure that we’ll be able to make a breakthrough, Saihara-kun,” he says kindly. “I will look through the files here again and see if I can find any encryptions!”

“That’s great, Kiibo,” Shuichi says softly, looking over at him. “Um, Kokichi, do you want to investigate with me? And Iruma-san, could I talk to you about something, too?”

Kokichi just shrugs, watching with eyes like wine. Iruma, across the table, looks surprised.

She swallows her lump of food and gives him a grin. Something about her is… thoughtful, perhaps a little distracted. But she still smirks in a familiar way, still tilts her head and says, “well, sure, Saihara. I’d be more than happy to _talk_ with you,” in a way that makes him simultaneously embarrassed and amused. 

Iruma follows them out into the hallway. Shuichi turns to her. “Um. Iruma-san, could you-”

“Yeah, I’ll show you what I’ve been working on,” she sighs, running a hand through her hair. “If you give me an hour or so, I’ll be done, but I might as well show you now, before you two get started on your big plan.” He and Kokichi share a glance, and she scoffs. “Please, if you two aren’t fucking then you’re clearly up to something. And we all learnt a while ago about how much you _aren’t_ fucking.” She leers, just for a moment, at the bruises on Shuichi’s neck, before she turns around with a hairflip and gestures them forward. “C’mon.”  
Iruma leads them to a classroom on the second floor. “Got Tsuji to break the security cameras in this one,” she explains to them as she unlocks it. “Rest in peace, and all.”

The door swings open. Inside, the room is filled with all manner of equipment- dismantled chairs, half a monitor, several pieces of security cameras and some screens. Iruma looks quite pleased with herself. “They didn’t stock the warehouse with anything useful, but they put nothin’ in the rules about taking their shit apart. Locked the gate and then left the fence wide open.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Shuichi mumbles, but he’s too distracted by staring at the collection of equipment on the table to question her further- especially when Kokichi is insistently shaking his cuffs and Shuichi is trying to unlock them while still staring. “Did you build all this?”

Iruma thumps one of the mottled creations proudly. “Kokichi, meet the electro-hammer 2.0! Still based on your blueprints, but this one doesn’t knock out electricity. Nah, this sweet baby is full of _pure destruction._ Imagine the horrendous neon-pink color scheme is still here.”

Kokichi’s eyes glint. He looks almost appreciative, and immediately walks over and picks it up, then makes as if to swing it. Iruma practically falls over herself shouting _not in here, you_ **_idiot!_ **Kokichi sets it down again, laughing behind the tape on his mouth. 

“What are the others?” Shuichi asks, softly. 

Miu picks them up- one familiar bomb, one odd jumble of chips and wires. “Electro bomb- this one really does take out cameras, but I’ve only got the one. And this… I’m not done with it, but…” She trails off, looking a little sheepish, and rubs the back of her neck. “It’s an add-on for Kiibo. It’s just a memory bank, really, so we can take him with us.” Her expression twists. “N-not that I care, obviously, I just… figured it was wrong to leave him behind. And that laptop is _full_ of malware. We can’t take it.”

“Iruma-san,” Shuichi says. “You really are brilliant.”

She flushes, hastily turning away from him and fussing with the equipment around her. “I- Ideally I wanna add on a screen, so he can actually look out and stuff, but I don’t know if I’ll have time- specially since my fuckin code…” She turns back and sticks out her wrist. _Must not build or alter machines_ blinks in green. “I was getting the paramedic to help, since I figured they had steady hands and all, but now I’m a bit-”

“Why not get Tojo-san to assist you?” Shuichi asks, hand to his mouth. Kokichi pokes at the hammer again. 

Iruma considers it, fiddling with her hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Probably better than Shirogane, who I was kind of considering. So, when do you guys want to take these out?” She raises an eyebrow, looking straight at Shuichi. “With Tojo’s help, I can have Kiibo’s new home ready in about…. Three hours. Hopefully. Tojo’s pretty capable.”

Shuichi glances at Kokichi. Kokichi reaches for a pen, bends over to write on a scrap of paper. Shuichi watches, anxious.  
LET US KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE WITH KIIBO AND WE’LL SET UP A PLAN. 

“Okay,” Iruma says, nodding. Kokichi grins at her. 

IF I DON’T DIE IN

Shuichi grabs Kokichi’s hand. Immediately, his other hand reaches for the tape on his mouth, and Shuichi grabs that, too. “Okay!” he says, as cheerfully as he can. “Well, that sounds good. You- you work on Kiibo, and we will go and plan, and- um.” He pauses, staring down at the still-struggling Kokichi, and then back to Iruma. “Could you help me handcuff him again, please?”

“Saihara,” she says, her grin blinding. “I thought you’d never ask.”

So, Shuichi and a very cranky Kokichi leave, both of them with significantly less dignity than they had when they first walked in. And they go and plan.

The plan goes like this: Shuichi tells everyone they’re investigating, and while the others are all crowding around the computer in the dorms, they head down to the basement, and Shuichi looks over it again- looking for something different this time.  
And when he finds it, the head back upstairs and grab paper and pens and they draw out the floor plan once more. They walk the floors, banging on walls and windows and marking which ones sound hollow. They join the others and make notes about what information the computer contained. They find Oshiro and pull her aside, and ask why she thinks she was chosen to be in this killing game.

Oshiro, gaze heavy, clasps her hands together when she thinks. She’s eight years older than them- twenty five, which feels like nothing. It feels like everything. She looks very young in her school-modeled game uniform, with a ribbon at her neck and her ruffled petticoats reaching her knees, her white socks just cut below. She looks very old, with her gaze like she’s lived one lifetime too many.  
“I have been outspoken about the killing games since I came out of my own,” she tells them. “While I have done my best to move on with my life, I have always been vocal about the trauma I experienced and how much Danganronpa ruined my life. While I wasn’t one of the first to reach out to Akamatsu-san, I’ve been fairly regular about sending her my experiences.” She tilts her head to the side, and a delicate ringlet slips over her cheek. “I and the others- I won’t say we worked the hardest, out of all the people Akamatsu and Amami-san called to, because we didn’t. But I think it’s fair to we had the most well-known presence- most other survivors chose to remain private. Those of us who chose to assign a face to our stories… we were aware something like this might happen, I think.” Her face creases, for a moment. “At least, I was. Kuse and Miya…. I truly cannot believe how easily they killed again. I suppose… just being here is enough to drive someone to do terrible things.”

And Shuichi understands, and he empathises, at the same time he condemns them. Because being here is draining. Being here is being surrounded by death. Being here is every worst fear come to life, all at once. It is brutal. It is a reminder that life is too short. That they have no control.  
On his wrist, a reminder of his ever-present mortality pulses away.

Shuichi makes notes, and makes notes, and Kokichi adds to them in red pen, until he inevitably starts trying to write about how he needs to die to save Shuichi and then run off with the papers until he is caught. They make notes. They fill a folder with them. Shuichi annotates and orders it carefully, just in case. Just in case someone else has to read it. 

Time passes. They sweep through again, adjust the floor plan. Shuichi logs the past weeks events. They meet up with Iruma and the others, and they watch, breath baited, as Tojo carefully plugs in Iruma’s drive to Kiibo’s laptop. 

Moments later, Kiibo’s face, pixellated and tiny, flashes on the smaller screen and gives them all a thumbs up. Everyone cheers- even Shuichi, whose heart is aching as he watches the tiny robot get passes around and hugged gently, in this new, small device.  
“I didn’t have time to program a voice for him or anything,” Iruma says, a little embarrassed. “So he’s just got an 8-bit soundboard.”

Kiibo makes a sound like she’s won an achievement. Everyone laughs. 

Shuichi looks at Kokichi. He looks at Iruma. He passes her a note, in this room with the cameras wiped.  
And then he and Kokichi go upstairs, to the dorms, and they stand right in front of the main security camera. 

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says, and he doesn’t let himself look at the screen, doesn’t let himself know that there are people watching them, drooling over them. “I won’t let you die.”

And Kokichi punches him in the face.

They tussel for a while. This time, there’s not quite so much heat- Kokichi is still cuffed, for one, and each one of them is trying to get hurt more than hurt the other. There’s a lot of rolling around on the floor and scratching gently and kicking the air. It feels kind of childish. Shuichi yells a lot of dumb stuff, about caring for Kokichi, about doing anything for him. Statements that are true but obvious. He doesn’t need to say it for Kokichi to know- he’s just filling space. Showing off for the cameras. Is this what they wanted?

A boom echoes from below them. He can hear Iruma yell something. 

Shuichi immediately releases Kokichi from the head lock and holds his face, scanning over him for injury. “You okay?”

Kokichi gives him a look that pretty clearly says _the ultimate detective asks a lot of stupid questions._ (Shuichi is quite familiar with this look.) The leader quickly wriggles away, brushing himself off, and makes a go for the tape on his mouth.

Shuichi grabs him by the handcuffs and, after scooping up their papers, drags him downstairs, apologizing the whole time. They pass camera after shut-down camera, and they know they don’t have much time before the masterminds of this particular game come after them.

When they regroup with the others, it’s in the library, at the place Shuichi marked out for Iruma. It feels kind of fitting, to have their last break out happen here.  
Iruma gives them a sharp grin when they arrive and motions them back. The whole crowd keeps about three feet away from her as she lifts the massive hammer, different sheets of metal bolted together.  
She swings it right at the back wall- the part that had been the dampest, had sounded the most hollow, had dripped with mould.

And then there is this massive, echoing sound that makes the whole room shake, dust falling around them, and for a moment Shuichi thinks the whole building is going to come down on top of them.  
And then the dust settles, and clears, and Iruma, coughing, throws the powered-down hammer aside and steps through the break in the wall. 

Everyone follows, two at a time, covering their faces. Shuichi steps in with Kokichi right next to him, and they blink furiously as they stare around, adjusting to the dim light. Kaede steps to the front and lifts up the glowing min-Kiibo.

The sewers. The sewers. Iruma has broken them into the sewers.

“Well, it’s not ideal,” she says, pulling a face. 

“No,” Maki says, quietly. “This is an excellent way of getting through the city.” She moves a few paces forward, pointing to the long tunnel that stretches out at the end of the foul-smelling, tiny room they stand in now. “But we’ll have to be swift. I can’t imagine it will take them long to follow us.”

And with that said, they all set out walking.

And walking.

The tunnels are long, and foul. Shuichi is reminded of the death road of despair- several times, they have to stop or turn around to avoid fragile, rusted bridges, pipes that look like they might burst, rivers of dirty water that look dangerous to even attempt to cross. There are gates padlocked shut, that Kokichi stares at with a special kind of frustration- but the second they try and let him out of the cuffs to open one, he was running to the edge of the stairs they stood on and trying to leap off the side.  
But they keep going. The stick to the left side to make sure they’re not retracing their path, and they keep in a group. They’re moving further away, even if they’re not actually… getting out. Really, it feels like they’re just getting further and further lost in the sewers.

Time, which already meant nothing, when you’re trapped in a building for a week with no natural light, means even less down here. Shuichi thinks that the dripping water is happening in seconds, and he counts with it. He thinks he’s counted enough times to split into hours, numbers turning into nonsense the higher they get. 

Eventually, they are all aching and tired, and after reaching yet another dead end, Kaede stops them.

“Guys,” she says, gently. “I don’t want to see us do this again.” She bites her lip. “I- no offense, Oshiro-” the composer bows her head. “I don’t want to see us burn ourselves out trying something. We’ve gotten pretty far without looping back, but we aren’t getting through the city. I think we should all take five, okay? We need a break.” She glances around. “Only, not here.”

And Shuichi, who knows he only has so much time left at this point, wants to protest, wants to cry out, wants to cling to the hope that he’ll get somewhere safe before the week ends. It must be evening now, at least. But the others seem to want the break- their shoes and lower legs are covered in waste, and their backs and arms hurt. Chabashira has been carrying Himiko for the last stretch, and although she won’t admit it, her legs are trembling a little. Even Gonta’s face is pale, and Ryoma, who had to be carried through some deeper and more thick water, looks like he might lose his mind if they don’t find somewhere dry for a bit. Kokichi doesn’t seem eager to stop. In fact, he’s struggling furiously, sticking his tongue against the tape covering his mouth, kicking at Shuichi’s ankles.  
But his struggling is considerably calmer than it was the last time he tried to break away, and Shuichi knows it’s not by choice. 

“Let’s go back to that patch of dry concrete,” he says, smiling at the others. Most of them cheer. When he meets Kaito’s eye, Kaito has to look away.

But they all go, and they all sit, and slowly they come back to themselves. Kokichi, too, seems a little more relieved- but the less tired he is, the more his restlessness grows.

Shuichi pulls them away from the rest of the group, for a little more privacy. He thinks he’ll probably give the others a… a speech, or something, before they set out again. He doesn’t know how much time he has, but now seems like a good time to do it. Just tell them how much he cares. But right now, Kokichi is more important.

“Hey,” he says, taking him over to stand at the edge of the group, near the left side of the tunnel they’re in. “Do you want a pen?” 

Kokichi stares up at him wearily. He’s been getting more and more desperate with his attempts to die- to fall straight on his face, or dive into vats of shit, or to make one last struggle for the tape on his mouth.

“I’ll cuff your hands in front of you?” Shuichi offers. “It’ll at least hurt less like that, right?”

And Kokichi really must be exhausted, because he just shrugs, and he lets Shuichi unlock the cuffs and relock them without any struggle, and when Shuichi offers him a pen, he stares at it for a moment like he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Eventually, he pushes back Shuichi’s sleeves from his hand, despite the fact Shuichi has a pile of investigative papers tucked under his arm, and writes over his knuckles. HEYA.

Shuichi laughs, softly. The corners of Kokichi’s eyes seem to soften, just a bit. He writes again. HOW’S IT GOING?

“Could be better,” Shuichi admits. He glances around. “Didn’t really picture ending up here when I told the lawyer I wanted to pursue a case against Danganronpa.”

Kokichi snorts, softly, switching to the other hand. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?

“You,” Shuichi admits. His hand moves without thinking, a few fingers stretching out, brushing against Kokichi’s, holding the pen together. Just a tiny nudge of knuckles. Acknowledgement. (Funny, how this touch is so tiny, how if it weren’t for the stupid, sappy expression he’s surely wearing, this touch could be innocent. Funny how it feels like everything.)

Kokichi moves, writing down the side of a finger now, the characters tiny, delicate, stitched in ink.

WE COULD’VE BEEN REALLY GOOD. 

“Ha,” Shuichi says, a little breathless, staring at the words. “You said that before, when we broke into the school-”

_Into the school._

He stares at Kokichi, and for a moment he sees someone else- or, no, still Kokichi. But different. He blinks. 

“When we broke into the school,” he repeats, slowly. He sees something like deja vu, or recognition, light in Kokichi’s eyes.

_Rain. Rooftops. Alcohol, cigarettes. Pyrrhic celebration. School. Danganronpa. Melting into the floor._

Shuichi opens his mouth, and he’s not sure what he’s going to say, but he knows it’s important. It’s important. This moment, this thing between them, something fluttering just at the edges of his memory. Something makes a small noise, some sort of beep, but he’s not paying attention to it right now.

“Do you remember?” He asks, almost desperate. His heart is beating so fast. He feels cold all over. He can’t- He can’t actually feel his hands. 

Shuichi tries to ask again, tries to break through this sweating, foggy haze, but all that happens is a sudden pain strikes through his chest and he wheezes.  
What?  
Something is beeping. 

Oh. 

The next thing he knows, his vision is white and he’s falling, crumpling backwards, and his chest hurts like it’s being cut open from the inside out. The papers tucked under his arm flutter out, like- like snowflakes, or birds, or just cruel, cruel irony. He can’t- he can’t breathe, and he can’t hear anything but the beeping. 

Kokichi’s face swims as he moves closer, and he can hear screaming, can hear Kaede, Kaito, Maki, Himiko, twelve others all calling out to him.

“Kokichi,” he breathes. It’s all white again. It’s all white. 

Shuichi feels like he falls through three layers of reality before he blacks out.

\--

_He stands just outside the gates of his school, his best friend halfway over a chainlink fence. The night air is cold, chilled._

_“Are you sure this is a good idea?” He hates how nervous he sounds. Hates that part of him, the way his fear creeps up as soon as he’s around strangers, as soon as he’s out in public. He hopes he can be rid of it, soon._

_“What are they gonna do, expel us?” His eyes shine yellow in the moonlight, devil-creature. Ghostly. His black shirt fades in and out of the night, as he beckons him into the school._

_“Ha.” Twists his fingers into his sleeves, nervously. It’s colder than he expected. He doesn’t have many warm clothes, but still, he went in a loose, thin sweater. Maybe if he shivers enough, his friend might put an arm around him._

_His untrustworthy eyes strain into the night. There’s a thud, suddenly, as the other boy drops from the fence and moves around to pry open the gates. (Usually, he’s the one picking locks, but he doesn’t have the height to get the boost up to the fence.) On the other side of the gates, he hears a curse, then something splintering, and then they swing open._

_He stares over at his friend, standing in the low light of his torch between two gates. He looks more ashen than ever in this dim light, like he’s shrinking away from it. Like he’s not-quite there. The school looms behind him- tall and brutalist and blocky. A million easily-imagined ghost stories spring to life._

_Still, when he extends a hand it looks warm. “Come on.”_

_What does it say about him that he is so willing to follow this ghost into a darkened school?_

_What does it say about him that he is so willing to follow this ghost into a killing game?_

_But that’s a lie, isn’t it. He smiles as he reaches out, takes the hand, steps through the gates into something he can pretend is another world, if he tries hard enough. Because he’s broken, yearning for more, some destructive purpose driving him into fantasies of ghosts and death and too-high stakes. He can’t imagine anything happier than being handed an adventure, no matter what that adventure leads to._ _  
__Because he doesn’t just follow this ghost. He runs with it, with its wolves, ahead, around, chasing each other into oblivion._

_They walk into the school. He picks the lock (not like it’s hard. He keeps three lock picks on him that were given to him by his dad in an attempt to make him more manly. It just made him a fag with the ability to break into most shitty locks) and holds the door open, and his ghost smiles at him as they step inside._

_They walk the same halls they walk every day, but it’s night now, and there’s no one they’re avoiding in the hallways. When they reach the third floor, it starts raining outside, dripping all over their carefully laid-out picnic plans. He shivers. An arm slips around his shoulders, in the dark, just a gesture from a friend._

_“Hey, let’s look for Hanako-san.”_

_They go into the girl’s bathroom, giggling childishly, and they take turns knocking on the third small. Hanako, if she’s there, doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t want to play- maybe she doesn’t want their souls. Maybe they’re too dirty for her._

_They step out of the bathroom, back into the halls. The rain is coming down harder now- proper downpour, no chance of giving up, soon. They walk into a classroom and go to stare out the huge windows._

_“Shall we still go to the roof?” He asks, tugging at the sleeves of his sweater._

_There’s a shift of weight, and then warmth against his hip as they stand too close, staring out the window, into the night. “Here is okay for me- but if you want to go up, that’s fine, too.”_

_“No, this… this is nice,” he murmurs. He gets a smile in response, subdued, small._

_They lay out a blanket, set out the bottle of booze, the cans of Monster, the papers, the tobacco, the over-priced weed, the bag of chips and the bag of sour candy. He keeps shivering, in the cold air, and he wonders how long they’ve spent walking the halls of the school, how the weather changed so swiftly- or if they’ve been lost for hours already, drifting helplessly, barely keeping track of themselves. It feels a bit like they’ve been there forever._

_“To the last time we ever have to set foot in this hellhole,” his friend says, raising the bottle of vodka and then swigging it back. He grimaces, gasps as he passes it over, but doesn’t reach for the energy drinks- because he’s a sweet guy, even if he’s fidgety and awkward, and he bought it for him. Because he knows he likes it._

_Takes the bottle. Thinks about how his lips have been pressed to it. “To new lives, and new experiences.” Raises the bottle. Drinks. Screws his face up at the burn, splutters and sets it down, grabs the can and flicks it open to chug from it._

_It’s not quite the… triumphant meal they expected. There’s something solemn in the air, even as they laugh at each other and open the candy and pass the bottle back and forth. Even when he starts rolling, using his favorite strawberry-flavored papers, stuffs them full of drugs that they won’t be able to use anymore in about a week, when they start preparing for the simulation. Withdrawal is going to be killer. That doesn’t stop him from lighting up now, though, staring out at the rain and watching his smoke fog the window._

_This is their last time in this school. They quit, officially, on Monday, but coming back tonight… it’s supposed to be cathartic. Supposed to be exciting. It just feels depressing._

_Ghost boy, shaky hands sitting next to him, pulls out his phone and queues a song, and it echoes in his ratty speakers. He passes the joint over. They shuffle closer. Their knees brushed, skin on skin between the rips in their jeans._

_“We deserved better,” he hears himself say._

_The boy next to him blinks, still processing his last hit, and shuffles back to lean against the window, holding out the joint to him. “We did,” he says, his slate eyes focused even now, flicking over his face._

_Being looked at makes him feel awesome. He wishes nobody would ever look at him, ever again. He wishes everybody would look at him, forever. He wishes he was looking at the only person to look at him._

_“We could’ve been really good,” he continues. He’s not quite sure what he’s saying- just that he’s sad, his stomach all tight, his ribs aching. When he takes another hit, his fingers shake, the glint of flame echoing in the window’s reflection, out into the raining night._

_“We were as good as we could be.”_

_He squeezes his eyes shut, coughs on smoke. “I know.” A pause. “Roll another, would you?” And darling, lovely ghost nods, smiles at him, reaches for the papers. He watches him silently, how his steady fingers are just a little slow, how his eyes are distant and sad. How they’ve both gotten everything they ever wanted and they’re still not happy._ _  
__Well. Not everything._

 _Straightening up, reaching for his lighter, blue-black hair dipping into his eyes. Raven. Delicate. Beautiful. Why do the others hate him so much? Because his parents died? Because he hangs out with the other local freak? Because he talks about Danganronpa, about death, about crime statistics too much? Because he’s fidgety, and hates eye contact, because he’s nervous around strangers and lives alone, because everyone else bullies him so you might as well join in too?_ _  
__The flame flickers on his face like a greek tragedy. He lights up as the worst of them grinds his joint into ash on the linoleum floor. Inhales. He watches it all, the way he breathes, every movement of his body, the way he seems to ache with it._

_Ghostly lover, thing to long for, is silent until he’s finished inhaling, is emptying his lungs into the glass, into the rain, and then he speaks. “Do you think we’re making a mistake?”_

_What kind of an answer is there to that?_

_He thinks of the papers he has at home, all the things they sent him about what to expect. He thinks of his parents- the flicker of regret that crossed his mother’s eyes when he told her, how they’ve been avoiding him ever since he’s started filling in forms, signing his soul away. How his father, who has beaten and ignored and mistrusted him his whole life, came to hover in his doorway while he watched repeats of the last seasons and tried to tell him that they loved him._ _  
__He thinks of his Monokuma plushie, of all the times he’s drooled over executions and deaths and then felt like shit because of it. Every crush he’s had standing in that familiar trial room._

_Of the character he’s written, their life and their friends and the confidence he’s tried to give himself. He knew, as soon as they greenlit him, as soon as he finished his interview, that they would pin him in an antag role. He’s always liked the antagonists, though- he doesn’t mind, even if it means he’ll probably end up dead. A bonus, even. He just…._

_He looks over at the soon-to-be ultimate detective, who has been watching him the whole time, joint in hand, silent and concerned. His face, his light eyes, the bags beneath them. The scars on his wrists, on his stomach. The rain behind him._

_He straightens up. Reaches for the vodka. Drinks it straight, just to have an excuse to screw his eyes up, look away. His stomach rolls. He wishes he would puke. He hasn’t in years._

_Wipes his mouth. Doesn’t reach for the Monster. Just stares right back as he sets the bottle down with shaky, wet hands. He wipes those down, too, but he still feels damp, all over. Funny how alcohol doesn’t burn until you get it in your mouth, or in a cut. Right now, dripping from his fingers, it just feels like water._

_“We’ve already signed everything, right?” He says, and he wishes. He wishes._

_“No going back now,” he echoes._

_“Hey.” knocks the bottle sideways. ignores it- the cap’s on, anyway. “You should kiss me.”_

_“hhhwh?” It’s so eloquent. He’s all frozen up, his eyes wide, smoke falling from his mouth. it’s laughable. Adorable._

_he knocks packs of candy aside as he shuffles over, crawling across their classroom floor. “you should kiss me,” he says again, placing his wet, burning hands on his friend’s knees, pushing himself up until they’re almost nose-to-nose, closer than they’ve ever been… maybe. They’ve woken up pretty close together sometimes, after some of their more wild nights._

_Lovely, loveliest gulps, and he watches his neck bob, glances down for just a second, and then back up to his eyes- wide, yellow, so pretty. “w…. Why?”_

_“come on, you know.” Because we might die, real or fake, in a few weeks. because we’re going to forget each other forever. Because this moment, right here, is going to be lost forever. because we’re drunk. Because you’re beautiful. because i want you to._ _  
__“I don’t want to hurt you,” he breathes against his mouth. swipes his tongue over his lips. laughs, softly. “Okay, I guess… I don’t want to hurt you more than I will.”_

_“i won’t even remember,” he tells him, pushing himself closer, never close enough. they waver, in this classroom, oil and water, curling around each other’s edges, pressing so close, so close, never quite dissolving the way they want. Bubbles._

_his eyes are drifting shut now, his head tilting like he’s not quite conscious of it. down in his lap, the joint burns itself out. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for… forever,” he murmurs, and the sentence finishes with their lips just brushing._

_“gross,” he murmurs back, but he sits up, pulls his hands back and slides them up to meet his neck and face- one hand cradling his cheek, the other sliding to the nape of his neck, and their mouths are touching now, breathing, and it’s nothing at all to sink against him and tug, just a little, at the hair at the base of his neck._

_And that’s all it is, really, all it takes, because then they’re kissing, ghost against the window, villain in his lap, now. He tugs again, presses closer, grips tighter, and every one of his own movements is met with fervent mirroring. They’re kissing, and then they’re falling back, and then they’re sprawled over their own picnic blanket, gripping at each other and biting their own lips, shared breath that’s never enough, never enough, always leaving them a little light headed. They’re kissing, desperate, and relieved, and regretful, and it is so much, so much that he’s wanted for so long, and still not enough._

_They don’t speak again. Pink, sugary soda spills all over the linoleum, soaks in. ants will be crawling in tomorrow, in the sticky, humid air, crawling to their nectar dripping through the bones of the school. They don’t speak, just breathe, pushing each other against desks and windows, laughing softly, tugging on the collars of shirts and the ends of hair- biting, scratching, slowing into something soft and painful only to roll over and laugh again._ _  
__He wants to take off his shirt, but he doesn’t. Wants to stop, take a moment and push the rest of their shit aside. Wants to go home, take things further, keep it forever. Wants to tell him to stop._

_maybe, he thinks, maybe we could keep this. maybe we could find a way to wriggle out of those contracts- maybe we could make it work like this, secret and shameful, overindulgence after class. maybe we could stay like this forever, go to university and you could study psychology and i could study theater, and maybe we could make it work, at least for a while. maybe we could be happy, for a while, in a shitty apartment with mould that we’re always late to make rent on, with shitty friends. maybe we could be drunk and pretentious and outgrow our bullies. maybe, we could cut out my parents and your overbearing aunt, and we could live off your inheritance and our shitty jobs at the grocery store downtown. maybe we could die of a heroin overdose at twenty four. maybe we could be happy, until then. as much as we can be, because i think my best chance at being truly happy, in this life that’s already broken me, is by being with you._

_But they’ve already dropped out. They’ve already signed up. Already told their families._

_They don’t speak. They already know what the other one is thinking._

_It’s too late- not since they signed those contracts, but far before. It’s been too late for them, ever since they met._

_good things just aren’t built to last in this world._

_\--_

_“Do you remember?”_

It’s like it happens in slow motion. Shuichi’s eyes, widening in recognition, his heart, frozen and unmoving, the others with their shifting eyes, glancing between them, and Kokichi opens his mouth but can’t speak, and he is dealing with this new, potential information, this thing he can’t even begin to look at. A picture he can only observe from low angles, so big he can only see a piece at a time, can’t quite link it all together. A memory he’s only just realized he has.  
And then a grating little jingle plays, and Shuichi’s eyes, blown wide, suddenly constrict. He crumples back, and suddenly Kokichi is leaping over to his side, furiously struggling with his cuffs, twisting them over his head so he can fucking get his fucking hands out, so he can touch Shuichi, can reach him. He kicks their papers of evidence aside as Shuichi staggers, grips his wrists when he reaches out. A drop of blood falls from his mouth. Kokichi can hear someone screaming- Akamatsu, Momota? Oh. No, that’s him, screaming his lungs out as he tries to prop Shuichi up against the wall, as he reaches down for his wrist and scrabbles at the tape, as he rips it back just enough to see red glowing beneath it, as he screams again, and again, behind that stupid, awful tape, as Shuichi staggers, slips.  
It can’t be time yet. It can’t be. It’s still- it’s still evening, right? They still have time, right?

“K-Kokichi,” he breathes, and his hands slide up to cradle Kokichi’s jaw as he falls down the wall, and Kokichi- Kokichi can feel his eyes burning, his throat ripped open by his own wails, and he falls, too, on his knees, begging, praying, clutching Shuichi’s wrists. “Kokichi.” And his voice is so soft, so quiet, and his eyes are slipping closed, and Kokichi is screaming, clinging to him, shaking him by the hands. 

“What’s going on?” Someone says behind him, and there is movement, frantic, frightened noises. People shuffle closer, this overbearing, pressing crowd shoving them in, and someone sets a hand on Kokichi’s shoulder and he whirls around to strike them, screams at them all to go, to leave, because it’s Shuichi, because it’s Shuichi, because he’s got to stop it.

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says again, and his fingers reach out, curl around the back of Kokichi’s head, pull him in like they’re sharing a prayer. Their foreheads press together, and blood is still dripping from Shuichi’s mouth, and his face has gone red and blotchy- every breath he takes seems to shake. Kokichi is shaking, still trying to push him up, staring at him. It’s not time yet, this is an accident, he still has time. “H-hey.” Shuichi’s eyes flick open, just once, and his pupils are so swollen, heavy in his gold eyes, deathly eclipse. 

_Shuichi._ Kokichi leans closer, grips at his shirt, presses their faces right up against each other. He can feel the ink-pen patterns on his face pressing into Shuichi’s, the triangles he drew on with a careful hand only hours ago. 

Don’t go.

Shuichi’s fingers tighten in his hair, just for a moment, and then they relax again. “I love you,” he murmurs, so soft. Barely there- Kokichi might not have heard it if he hadn’t been watching that bloodied mouth so closely, truth cutting his tongue like diamonds. Kokichi sobs, wild and panicked, and Shuichi smiles, but his eyes are so sad when he closes them. 

Shuichi. Shuichi. Kokichi clutches at his clothes, trembles. The hand in his hair slips, slowly, like it’s stroking his hair one last time, and then falls to drape over his shoulder.

Shuichi?

Kokichi goes very still. He listens, closely, for any shuddering breaths. One. Two. Three.

Behind him, Akamatsu lets out a soft sob, muffled. “Is he really-”

Kokichi hates her, in that moment, hates all of them, all of them who worked so hard to let this happen, to save Kokichi instead of him. All of them did this. They let him die, they looked at Kokichi and decided to tape up his mouth and treat him like a baby who needs to be cared for, like he can’t-

Kokichi reaches up, immediately, for the tape on his mouth. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe he can-

“No!” Thick arms wrap around him, grab his hands. Kokichi struggles, kicking wildly, as someone pins his cuffed hands down and picks him up. He continues to kick and yell as he’s lifted in the air, thrashing about as wildly as he can, staring desperately at Shuichi’s body.  
“Doing that won’t bring him back!” Momota yells, squeezing him tighter. Kokichi spits like a wild animal, swings a foot back and aims for the groin. He gets Momota in the thigh, instead, but he kicks again, trying to push him off, trying to scrabble back to Shuichi’s side. 

Shuichi is still lying there, eyes closed, lips parted, a thin line of blood trailing down his chin, his carefully curated evidence scattered around him. His skin is ghost-like, paperish, and his expression isn’t…. He doesn’t look frightened. He just looks sad, sad beyond words, weak and tragic and - and this shouldn’t have happened, how could this happen?

“Ouma,” Momota murmurs, and his voice is- Kokichi’s never heard the idiot sounding this afraid, this sad, this broken. “Ouma, he wouldn’t want this.”

But Kokichi doesn’t care what Shuichi wants, because Shuichi isn’t here. Shuichi is lying on a tunnel in the sewers in some shitty prefecture with blood on his frozen face and his body all limp. Shuichi left him all alone. Shuichi really is a ghost, now, because he’s always been walking in mortality like some kind of reaper, and now he’s collected his last soul- Kokichi’s- and he’s crossed over for good. Kokichi doesn’t care what Shuichi wants, because he didn’t care about what Kokichi wanted. He left him here. He left him all alone.

The rest of the class stares silently, semi-circled around their once leader. Kokichi despises them all, viciously, for letting this happen. He hopes they despise him, too. He hopes they tear him apart once they realize who they traded his life for.

He keeps struggling as Momota holds him up, and he hates it, hates how useless he feels, hates how he can’t talk. He has- he has no agency here, he’s just some little brat making a scene.

Shuichi, Shuichi, with his dark hair and light eyes. Shuichi, Shuichi, Shuichi, come on, sit up. Shuichi. Come on. Come slow dance again, come laugh, come link our fingers together. Come and water our plants and reorganize your books. How… how is Kokichi supposed to find the order you want them in? How is he supposed to keep it together, how- how is he supposed to go home to somewhere cold and empty and dark. Can’t you fucking see, you idiot? Can’t you tell that it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not there? Shuichi. Shuichi, wake up. Shuichi.

Akamatsu steps up, next to him and Momota, and he tries to kick her, too. She doesn’t even look at him. “Was… was it his code?” Her voice is trembling slightly.

Harukawa steps up, too, and Kokichi tries even harder to kick her, because now his hatred is like a relief, anything to drag him from these awful, awful feelings wrapping him up, making him so useless. “We should check,” she says, her voice dark. “It might be important to know what exactly…. Did it.” Even her voice wavers, throat thick.

Yes, check, Kokichi thinks, as Yumeno wails somewhere behind him. “He’s not- he’s not really gone, right? Shuichi!” She calls, breaking into a yell as her girls try and hush her. “Shuichi! Shuichi, wake up!!!! Someone help him!”

“Take Ouma,” Momota says suddenly, and then Kokichi’s practically thrown at Harukawa as the astronaut steps forward. One of her deadly hands slips up his arm, grips his shoulder, and he shudders and goes still, trapped with the lump in his throat. He can only watch as Momota steps forward, kneels down, and reaches for the bangle.  
Kokichi waits, hopeful, terrified, until Momota carefully tucks it back into the duct tape and pulls Shuichi’s sleeve down. He stands up, and turns back to look at them. “Shuichi hid it from us for a reason. I think we should respect his decision.”

“B-bullshit,” Akamatsu whispers. “Bullshit, we should.” And then she marches forward, shoving Momota out of the day, and when he stammers she sends him a glare. Then she reaches up, leans her head against Shuichi’s face, and Kokichi has to fight back an irrational spike of jealousy. “Maki.” Her voice is clearly struggling to stay steady. “Can you come over here and check his pulse?”

He half-expects Harukawa to just drop him, leave him to crumple to the ground and splinter his face, but maybe she’s in shock. Maybe he just looked so pathetic, earlier, that she has no choice but to brush his shoulder as she guides him over into Momota’s giant, clumsy hands. Passed back and forth like a rag doll. Ha.  
Harukawa’s eyes are flat, metal, as she moves over to kneel down by Shuichi’s side. She presses her fingers, her thumb, against his neck. Everything feels very still. She shifts, moves and checks his wrist, and then lowers her head to his mouth like Akamatsu had, and Kokichi fights back another, incredibly stupid rush of awful feelings, that someone he hates shouldn’t be so close to someone he-

“He still has a pulse,” Harukawa says, and her voice sounds breathless. “He’s still breathing, it’s- it’s faint. Hold on.” 

What?

Kokichi watches, distantly, as Harukawa opens his eyes, leans in and away, pinches his knees and limbs. She stands up after a moment, and lifts him, carefully, bridal carry. “He’s unconscious,” she informs the others. “It looks like… the poison didn’t kill him. But it’s possible he’s slipped into a coma.” Her throat bobs, just for a moment, and her gaze becomes more determined. “We need to hurry to get out of here. He needs immediate medical attention.”

Kokichi’s whole body feels faint. He can’t look away from Shuichi’s face, which is so fevered, his eyes so closed, the stillness over every inch of him. He couldn’t…. He couldn’t hear breathing, so… is this a joke? Is this one last act of cruelty from the assassin?

“Tsuji’s code killed them, though, right?” Yonaga asks, quietly. “Are we sure it’s his code? M-maybe it was-”

“No,” Momota says suddenly, and then he’s lifting Kokichi up, like how Harukawa is holding Shuichi, like they’re both broken. “It was his code. He…. he told me about it.” And Kokichi can only stare at him, as Momota glances down, and then back out over the group. “He knew… he knew he wasn’t gonna make it when we set out, I think.” His voice dips down, grows thick, and then he swallows sharply, and he’s back, the astronaut they all depend on, holding Kokichi up high. (Kokichi would hate him for it, if he had the energy to stop staring at Shuichi’s body.) “But- but he’s still breathing, so we still have time! And when we get out of here, and he wakes up, I’m sure he’ll tell all of you, still. But for the moment, we gotta focus on getting him out, okay?”

 _He’s trying to save me,_ Kokichi realizes distantly. From their resentment? Their anger? Their betrayal? Hah. Momota is the betrayer. How long had he known? How long had he allowed Kokichi to live?

Nobody seems too convinced, until Akamatsu speaks up, staring over at Kokichi. “We’ve got to get out of here, soon. There’s no time to spend waiting around, come on. Finding what happened to Shuichi can happen later, okay?”

And still they all linger. Murmuring, pointless conversation. 

Blood slips from Shuichi’s wet mouth and hits the concrete below. 

Kokichi is wriggling from Momota’s arms before either of them can process it. He’s wading through the water, ignoring the shouts, ignoring Harukawa’s snake-eyes as he walks right up to her and over to Shuichi. He pulls his hands around, reaches for one of those long, thin wrists, and holds it tight. 

Something pulses, weakly, under his fingers. And again. And again. 

Kokichi allows himself a moment of this, closing his eyes, tuning the others out, leaning in to feel Shuichi’s breath, so slow, so uneven, coming and going like a low tide. 

Then he turns to face the others, and, swiftly, reaches up and finally rips the tape from his mouth. 

Momota is too slow. Harukawa is too busy trying to support Shuichi. Akamatsu is too far away.

It doesn’t matter, though, because Kokichi, with his free, oh god, his free and open mouth, finally gets to clear his throat and say, “Let me out of these cuffs and I promise not to unlock the gate for you.”

“Ko-” Momota’s yell cuts itself off. Everyone falters, stares at him, as Kokichi scowls right back. 

“I’m killing myself, come on,” he hisses. God, he has missed being able to tell these idiots when they’re being idiots. He has missed having agency. “Not that I wouldn’t just love to stand around here until Shuichi dies….” He shakes his wrists more insistently.

Momota hesitates for a moment, staring back at him, like he’s still afraid Kokichi will kill himself at any second. Ha. If Shuichi stops breathing, sure, it’ll be convenient to quickly off himself, but as long as he’s - he’s still breathing. There’s still time. Kokichi isn’t going to be treated like he’s made of glass. “Momota. Your face is so charming, I wish to stare at it forever.”

Momota, predictably, flushes (more out of anger than anything else) and grumpily searches through his pockets, before pulling out the key. He steps over, and unlocks the cuffs. Kokichi quickly snatches the key, and then proceeds to stretch his arms out. Good god, he has so many aches.

“Hey!” Momota shouts, but Kokichi ignores him, whirling around to face the others. Some of them are talking. Most are just staring. He tunes them all out, for the most part, because there’s someone more important with his breath fading, only a few steps away.

“I do not need a hairpin and some screwdrivers, Miu. If you give them to me, I’ll kill you.”

Miu stares at him for a moment, then gives a small, raw smile. “Nice to have you back, ‘kichi,” she mumbles, already slinging her bag around an arm to sort through its contents- soon pulling out a handful of sharp objects that look helpful.

Kokichi doesn’t smile, too focused, but he gives her a nod as he takes them, and then marches down the sewers, uncaring of the places his shitty uniform is growing soaked. The others follow behind, and he is acutely aware of every footstep- Harukawa, Shuichi still in her arms, Momota next to her, trying to stay calm. Akamatsu, almost grimly determined, with Miu next to her looking furtive and concerned. Himiko is still sniffing, but even she is doing her best to pretend she’s confident and determined. Every one of them is quiet, speaking softly, speaking about Shuichi- unified by the one person they all want to protect.

Unlocking the gate is easy. Kokichi’s hands only tremble a bit, and that’s because everyone is staring at him. He cracks the padlock on the chains, and then gets to the actual lock on the gate, and then he pushes them open and immediately storms through, none of his usual dramatic flourish. He thinks some people congratulate him- he’s not sure.

“Keep right,” he says, as he turns left, as he wades through muck and filth and stares straight ahead. If something happens to Shuichi, Harukawa will say something. Kokichi can’t look back. Can’t be distracted. They need to keep fast, now. 

“Ouma, man, you’re doing great,” Momota says, his voice stupid and comforting and patriotic, as if he isn’t the reason Shuichi ended up like this. “It’s gonna be fine, dude, he’s gonna be alright. Just keep moving, alright, buddy? You’re doin’ great.”

Kokichi curls his hands into fists and walks faster. He breaks them through another grate. He rolls up his white uniform and climbs through a pipe to drop around a bend and lift a grate for the others to get through. He squeezes into tight spots, directs the others ahead, marks every corner they cross with one of Shuichi’s pens.

He thinks of DICE, of breaking into abandoned buildings with them. Going on ahead, checking that it’s safe. Always darting back, never leaving the group for too long. Never leaving them behind. Ten clowns, tumbling through the city. People chasing them, never getting close enough. 

_“All the world’s a stage,” he’d told them once._

_“And all the men and women merely players?” One of them had replied- codename Queen, tall and stately, heart-shaped mouth. Her brother stood next to her, twin smiles, leaning against each other._

_He’d snapped his fingers at the pair. “Exactly! But not merely. Is there anything better than a good performance?”_

_“The after-party,” someone else had joked- Hearts, hair like candyfloss, eyes like amber, a taste for love and for sweet wine. The rest of them laughed- because they did that a lot, laugh and joke and tease each other._

_“Isn’t that just another performance?” Kokichi had asked, grin on his face. “Lovely henchmen of mine, when aren’t we performing?”_

_A girl with blood on her knuckles and freckles on her nose had raised one sharp eyebrow. “Now, don’t get philosophical on us, boss.”_

_“I’m not! Please, don’t insult me.” He’d brushed it off, literally, swiped at his shoulders and grinned at her sweetly. “All I’m saying is that everything is a performance. All of it, the after party, the shows within shows, the most secret conversations. And isn’t that the fun of it?”_

_At the back of the group, one of them had stood up and stretched, soft eyes and leather gloves. “And so we should make even our most petty crimes elaborate and exciting?”_

_“Exactly! If I don’t go out with a bang, what’s the point?”_

What is the point. That conversation never happened. 

Kokichi walks through shit, his white uniform turning grey and green brown. He remembers sewing it, chopping up the bottom, Hearts sticking pins in him to keep it together, Jack painting patterns on the shoulder. He remembers cutting the buttons from people’s coats in the middle of a shopping mall- a stupid challenge, a quest for his sleight-of-hand skill, a dumb trick. They’d all laughed about it as they stitched them on. They had picked out the checkerboard scarves together, a matching set of ten. He’d loved every part of it.  
They were just dumb kids, causing trouble, running wild. Too smart for their own good. They planned to escalate someday, really make a name for themselves beyond their boring little prefecture. Cause chaos all across the country. DICE, the number one not-secret secret organization. They wanted their faces, their masks in the newspaper every day. The ultimate initiative said that they could have it. 

Kokichi strips off the scarf and uses it to shimmy over a chunk of barbed wire so he can get Harukawa and Shuichi through the side. It tears, sticks to the metal. He leaves it.

They continue on. Kokichi feels ghosts running around him, laughter echoing through the hollow halls of the sewers. The glimpse of white just around a corner.  
Diamonds adjusts her gloves as she walks next to him. “If you run on ahead for a bit, you can get a good look for any upcoming obstacles. Just make sure to head back to the group every now and then, okay?”  
Kokichi runs ahead. He darts back. He knows where the group is at every moment, guiding them through. It’s a game. It’s just another game.

Mage hovers over Harukawa’s shoulder, staring at Shuichi’s slack face. “A coma induced by poison has potential to be cured,,” he says, and his voice is as soft as ever. “He’ll get through it. You’d be surprised by how resilient the human body is.”  
Kokichi takes it to heart. He doesn’t look back at Shuichi. He just trusts that his heart is still pumping, his brain still fighting. He focuses on getting them through. He crawls through the smaller tunnels. He wades through filth. He picks and kicks and bashes through every door without looking back. 

“You can make that jump,” Ace tells him from the other side of a deep pool of sewage. When Kokichi lands, his ankles shake so bad that he has to take a few moments before he can move over and a lower a bridge for the others. Ace smiles at him the whole time, hovering by his shoulders.  
He keeps moving on. He looks out for stairways, moves them up levels, gets them into some kind of maintenance room, and then leads them back down to more of the endless, winding maze. The smell is like rot and bile and waste. His feet hurt. His hands are scraped from forcing open too many fiddly doors.

“Give it a little more elbow grease, boss,” Clubs says, pumping her fists as Kokichi grits his teeth and stomps through the next grate. He thinks of every fight they got into together, every scrap for territory in town and disagreement over belongings in desperate childhoods. He keeps going. He keeps going.

He’s struggling with another door, the hairpin bent and twisted, when Miu comes up to stand next to him. “Hey,” she says softly, passing over another pin without asking. “Need anything else?”

He shakes his head, grits his teeth, and cracks it open. They walk through to stand on dry concrete -an improvement, even if the smell is just as bad.

“I can go check out the right passage while you check the left?” There is no gross sympathy on Miu’s face. Just determination. A willingness to help. Even after everything.

Kokichi hesitates for a moment, then nods, sharply. Miu leads the rest of the group right, and he runs left. Then he doubles back to catch up when he finds a dead end. Miu gives him a grin and a salute and lets him retake the lead. They keep going.

At one point, Kokichi is preparing to leap over another deep pool of shit, when Gonta walks up, calmly, and tosses him over. Somehow, he lands easily, on his feet, and only skids a little. Gonta gives him a thumbs up as he lowers the bridge. 

Tojo steps up to walk next to Harukawa, the two of them shifting Shuichi to keep him on his side. “I will keep an eye on his pulse,” she informs them. “If anything changes, I’ll let you all know immediately.”

Oshiro, walking quietly with her hands clasped together, suddenly jogs up to join them. “Tojo-san,” she says, her voice sweet and musical and her red eyes blazing. “If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to check Saihara-kun’s breath. Even a composer knows a little about voice and breath, and I think I can identify any dangerous changes.”

Miu and Kokichi keep walking together. At some point, Akamatsu joins them, still holding lap-Kiibo open wide so he can look around. 

“Kokichi,” she says softly, none of her usual cheer- something a little grim in her eyes. It’s like being back in the game. It’s like watching her lose her faith, and find it again. “Shuichi would be very proud of you right now.” Kiibo nods, playing a little melody in agreement.

Laughter echoes in the slow, steeped halls. They break through into a building. 

The group steps up, up, slowly, into what looks like a maintenance building. Kokichi starts to run. The others are not far behind. He is covered in filth and muck and everything hurts but he runs, harder than he’s ever run before, bashing through doors and through windows until finally, finally, he crashes through a last pane of glass and spills onto a road, an actual road, and the others spill after him. 

“We’re out,” Momota whispers. “We made it.”

“We’re not done yet,” Miu says. “Come on, we’ve got to keep moving until we find someone with a phone.” She doesn’t complain about being seen covered in shit. She doesn’t try to wring out the end of her dress or clean her boots. She just marches on forward, like she trusts wherever Kokichi goes next.

They keep walking. They keep walking. A car passes. It stops. 

A woman climbs out, hand to her mouth. “Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god, it’s you?”

Kokichi, covered in filth and grime, steps forward and grins, exhaustion dripping off his face. “Hey,” he says. “We are totally not in danger right now.”

And Akamatsu says, “PLEASE CALL AN AMBULANCE!”

_\--_

_“_ _Saihara.”_

_Shuichi had been dragged into an empty classroom, a hand over his eyes. Tsuji Michi- he was pretty sure it was Tsuji, at least, shoved him into a chair, kept their hand firmly applied to his face. “Okay, I’m going to pull my hand away, but you have to promise not to scream, okay?”_

_He nodded. He didn’t say anything. They pulled their hand away._

_The ultimate paramedic stood in front of him, mask on, gloves up high. Behind them, an array of various medical equipment and machinery sits- none of which he’d seen in the workshop. “Iruma-san’s been helping me,” they explained. “Her code prevents her from making or altering any machines. So she’s been… guiding me. In turn, she helped me with several of my test runs.”_

_“Test runs?” Shuichi echoed, looking around the room. “What are you working on?”_

_Tsuji stares at him like he’s a particularly annoying obstacle in their plans. “Iruma-san is not here right now, because she’s got a separate project of her own, but I’ve already briefed everything with her, so you don’t need to worry about that. Saihara-kun, could you roll up your left sleeve for me?”_

_He almost obeys- then remembers. “Um, I can’t…”_

_“I already know what your code is.” They stare at him flatly, their expression almost sympathetic. If he looks close, he can see the grief behind their eyes, the desire to mourn that they can’t indulge. “Iruma-san figured it out, actually.”_

_Shuichi laughs, awkwardly, because that doesn’t…. They might not know it completely. They might be mistaken. “I don’t…”_

_“That’s why your friend is attempting to die, right?” Tsuji tugs on their gloves, like they’re ensuring they’re secure. “He wants to save you.”_ _  
__Shuichi’s throat feels raw. He lowers his head. He thinks about Kokichi, the determination on his features when he opened his mouth, how desperately he’d kept fighting._

_He reaches for his sleeve and rolls it up._

_Tsuji nods. “Strip off the duct tape, please. I might be able to stop that.”_

_“What?” That makes him look up, makes hope glitch through his system. “Really?”_

_The ultimate paramedic nods again, turning to sort through the worktable. “Maybe. Don’t get your hopes up.” They return with tray after tray of medical equipment- several syringes, a set of thin blades. “I might also kill you.”_

_Shuichi stares at all the equipment stacking up, and his stomach starts to turn- with worry? More hope? “As long as you confess in the trial,” he murmurs. “But, ah-”_

_“Oh, I won’t have a chance to.” Tsuji adjusts their gloves again, pulls up their mask, takes a breath. “If I make a mistake here, it will probably violate my forbidden action.” They reach for one of the syringes, but instead of aiming it at him, they roll up their own sleeve and point it into their forearm. They raise an eyebrow. “This will… hopefully, if Iruma-san followed instructions, put something of a timer on the poison- I should have about five minutes to get this done and still be okay if I come in contact with blood. But before I do that, I_ **_am_ ** _a doctor… I’d like to make sure I have your consent for this incredibly risky, never-tested-before procedure.”_

_“Are you really a doctor?” He blinks at them._

_They sigh. “I’m twenty and a genius, Saihara, the doctorate was less hard than completing my twelve-step program. If you’re concerned, we don’t have to go-”_

_“No.” He sits up. “No, no, please. If there’s any chance… I want to take it. I don’t want to die.”_

_Their eyes go soft and sad for a moment. They nod. “Okay.”_

_Tsuji is a quick nurse. He supposes that paramedics are used to dealing with urgent situations, but first they inject themself, and then they’re swiping his arm down with alcohol and pressing in a set of local anesthesia needles into his arm. “They’ll probably kick in a bit later,” they tell him. “So, sorry for starting now.”_ _  
__It hurts, unsurprisingly, having your not-quite numb arm sliced into with thin blades. Tsuji straps his arm down first, talks the whole way through. “These bracelets are coded so that trying to remove them will kill you, so please forgive me for being so deliberate,” they say softly. “I’m trying to isolate the wires leading into your skin and disable as many as I can, but it’s- think of it as a very high-stakes game of operation, only I can’t see what I’m doing and I have a very strict time limit and also I haven’t been trained to do this.”_

_“Comforting,” Shuichi jokes, and his voice has no breath in it. It hurts so much, but he squeezes his eyes shut and thinks of the possibility that they might be able to get out if he survives this. That hope, floating above his head, the chance for life, it drags him with it. “If- if I do die here, can you tell Kokichi… tell him I was trying to get both of us out?” He closes his eyes, can’t look at the danger on his arm anymore. It still hurts just as much. “Just tell him I tried.”_

_“Of course, Saihara,” Tsuji says, then their breath catches, and for a moment he thinks he’s about to die, but then they let out a hiss. “Sorry about that,” they say, letting out a little laugh. “You’re fine, don’t worry.”_

_The continue working on his arm. After a while, the ache kind of dies away- in a weird way, where he can remember the pain so acutely that it feels like it’s still there, but there’s just… nothing, nothing registers below his elbow._

_“Okay,” Tsuji says quietly, after about four minutes have passed. “Saihara, I’m going to need you to shut up and listen to me now.”_

_“O-okay,” he says, just as weakly as before. He cracks open one eye, glances down to his arm, and then immediately has to squeeze it shut again._

_“I’ve gotten about… half of the wires disabled here. That means that the amount of poison that gets injected will be…. Hopefully… Maybe… okay, it might be survivable, but I really can’t guarantee that. But I… I’m running out of time, so as soon as I finish explaining this I’m going to start sewing you up again, okay?”_

_Shuichi nods, just a tiny motion of his head, arm still frozen. “Whatever you think is best,” he says, quietly. “Thank you, Tsuji-san.”_

_“It’s… it’s no trouble, Saihara, really. I know what it’s like to… care about someone like you do.” Their smile is small when he peeks at them, as they reach sideways and grab a needle and thread. “So, when I’m finished, I need you to place a cotton pad in this and then wrap it in gauze. I’ve set both to the side- I’m sure you can manage that. After that, cover it with your duct tape again. I’ve also got some in here.” Shuichi shuts up and listens, lets Tsuji take a moment to breathe. “I’ve had Iruma teach me to switch the monitors on and off, so nothing happening here is going to alert your captors. When I’m… finished, cover up your wrist, and don’t uncover it until you’re out. Don’t let them know you have an advantage. Don’t even tell the others- not even your boyfriend, okay?” Shuichi opens his mouth to protest, but they fix him with a fierce stare. “Seriously, Saihara. This might still kill you, okay? So… don’t get their hopes up. And don’t let the captors know. Don’t give them any reason to shoot you. The others need you, Saihara, so just… stay on the ball until you get out, okay?” Tsuji stands back, sets the thread aside. Their gloves are stained with blood. “Okay,” they say again._

_Shuichi opens his eyes, looks down at his wrist- which now looks fine, a layer of neat stitches just next to the bangle. He still can’t feel it, but it’s all clean, and looks fine. He looks back to Tsuji, smiling. “Thank you, I really…” His next words cut off as he stares at them, properly, for the first time. Their paper-thin skin, the rush of blood coating their cheeks in a fever, the way they’re swaying slightly. The sudden sickness that has spread over their face. “Tsuji-!”_

_“Ha,” they say, and then they crumple down. They lift their hands, stare at the blood coating them. “I didn’t think the gloves would help. They’re not proper surgical grade, I guess. I wear them too much- maybe they just count as part of my body at this point?” A weak cough._

_Shuichi staggers to his feet, eyes wide. “We- what did you inject? Is there any more of it?”_

_They shake their head, a giggle bubbling from their throat, followed by more blood, a trail of it down their chin. “Nope. And it doesn’t really fix it, just prolongs the effects- I lied about that. Ha. Fooled the ultimate detective. Put that on my gravestone, would you?”_

_“G-god,” Shuichi whimpers, falling to his knees, crawling over to reach them. “I’m so sorry.”_

_Their eyes flutter closed for a moment, and they shake their head. “S’okay,” they mumble. “I don’t blame you for being… distracted.”_

_He takes them in his arms, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s never… fuck, he’s never watched somebody die before, he’s just found their bodies. Is this the first time he wasn’t too late? Is this the first time he really could have saved someone?_

_He failed. He failed, again. He’s never been able to save them._

_“Hey,” Tsuji says, clearly struggling to breathe. “Don’t blame yourself for this one. I knew I wouldn’t get out of here alive- not with that code. I’m built to help people.” They close their eyes again. “And Aya’s gone,” they murmur. “So… so there’s not much left, anyway.”_

_“There’s so much left,” Shuichi whispers. “You could still have been happy.”_

_“Hey, Saihara?” Tsuji opens their eyes again, lets them flutter for a moment, like they can’t decide how they want to die. “Try… try not to die, okay? Not for me. I mean, sure, I worked really hard to keep you alive, and I think the work… the work you’re doing against fucking Danganronpa… it’s really great.” Their breathing is growing raspier, rougher, they’re struggling more. Even slowed down, this poison still seems to be eating at them rapidly. “But… when Aya died. Ha.” Their eyes drift to the ceiling. “I know I’d get over it, I guess. Eventually. But I just can’t… feel like this. Again. Not after the last game. Saihara.” And they look at him, again, and despite how their body is clearly draining, the pain twitching over their face, the fever in their eyes, they look just as determined as they did when they first sat down. “Don’t leave your friends alone, okay? They need you.”_

_Shuichi swallows. He reaches up, brushes their bangs out of the sweat on their forehead. “Okay,” he whispers._

_“Good.” They finally close their eyes again, seeming to settle there. “Remember what I told you okay? Bandage that before you put the tape on.”_ _  
__Shuichi laughs, wetly, and they do, too, and they laugh together, sitting on the floor of a classroom in a model killing game. “And clean it, when you can. Change the dressings daily, but only… only if you won’t get caught. It’s important to keep your wounds clean…”_

_And that’s all the ultimate paramedic ever says._

\--

_Day ?????_

….

………….

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Shuichi opens his eyes.

And then the beeping increases and they close again, and there’s nothing but darkness. Just before he dissolves away, he sees Kokichi’s face, frantic, panicked, leaning over him, and before he can reach out, he’s tugged back so sharply into unconsciousness that it feels like his body falls with him.

(Kokichi sees Shuichi’s eyes flutter open, panics, stands up, calls for doctors, and Shuichi looks so sleepy and tired- and all he does is extend a hand, fingers curling, before it falls back onto the bed.)

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Shuichi opens his eyes.

The beeps speed up, and then fall back into place as he tries to inhale. He blinks, blearily, and for a moment he thinks he’s waking up from yet another simulation. That he’s going to find out the others are all fine, that he can be lead out to wait for Kokichi to wake up.  
But this hospital room has yellow wallpaper and no Danganronpa logos anywhere, not even on the medical equipment. There are no wires hooked through his body, just an iv drip and a respiratory mask.

And when he looks to his right, he sees Kokichi sitting there. 

He’s sleeping, Shuichi’s slow brain tells him, entranced and drawn in by this Kokichi, who is breathing slow and steady, his body tucked up into a chair, a blanket wrapped around his form. His chin is resting on his own shoulder, head turned into an angle, and it can’t be comfortable at all but with the exhaustion on his features it’s no surprise that he’s sleeping.  
Shuichi reaches out, places a hand on his knee. He wants to touch his face, his hair, but he can’t quite get his body to sit up when he wants it to. So he settles for this small gesture, just to lay a hand against him. And then he slips back into not-quite sleep. 

(A few hours later, Kokichi wakes up and finds a hand in his lap. He, quite rightfully so, freaks out.)

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Shuichi opens his eyes.

This time, after a few moments, he’s able to piece together his memories. He knows where he is. The mask is off, replaced with some sort of supplemental oxygen device plugged into his nose, and he takes a moment to swallow, to blink, to remind himself all the ways that his body is real. 

And he looks over.

And Kokichi, wonderful, human, living Kokichi, is there, still curled up in the same chair, staring at his phone with heavy eyes. 

“Are you okay?” Shuichi asks, softly. 

Kokichi jumps, drops his phone, stares over at him. Several emotions cross his face in seconds, before they’re quickly replaced with a smooth, indifferent mask. “Just fine.”

Shuichi bites his lip, and the movement feels slow and off. “I’m alive?”

“You’re alive.”

“Good.” He closes his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“H- you-” When Shuichi opens them again, Kokichi is staring at him like he can’t quite believe he’s there, like he, for once, doesn’t know what to say. “Good!” He settles on, and anger is flashing through his eyes. “You should be!”

Shuichi winces. He’d been afraid of this- that if he did live, Kokichi would hate him for it- hate what he put him through, what he said and didn’t say, all the pain that almost was. Kokichi- how long has he been here, waiting? Never sure if Shuichi would pull through, if he would properly wake, if it would be okay?  
The fact that his relationship with Kokichi has been insurmountably changed hangs over his head. Yet another victory of the people who captured them.

“Are the others okay?” He murmurs, because he’s got to know, he can’t- he’s got to know. They’ve got to be fine, right?

Kokichi sniffs. “They’re fine. Just traumatized. And annoying. They’ve left you a bunch of presents.” He jerks his head to the table on the other side of Shuichi, and when he glances over, he has to blink a few times to take everything in. 

_Did you get me anything?_ he wants to ask, teasingly, but he can’t. He…. they’ve got too much to talk about.

“How are you?” Everything feels tense and painful. Maybe that’s got something to do with the fact that parts of his body still aren’t responding. Maybe it’s the poison in his heart that’s making it clench like this, making it bleed. His question hangs in the air like dead weight, suspended, wrong, out of place. He can still hear something beep, can’t tell if it’s a monitor or just his own brain mocking him.

“You’ve already asked that,” Kokichi grumbles.

Shuichi bites his lip, turns his head on the pillow. “It’s important,” he says softly. “I-” And then he starts to prop himself up, wincing at the pain as he pushes up his back.

Immediately, Kokichi lunges over and presses him back down. “Don’t,” he says, quietly. “I’ll go get a doctor, okay? It’s important you don’t push yourself-"

“No,” Shuichi says, staring up at him even as he leans back obediently. “I- I’ve got too much to say to you, I don’t want a doctor here. Please.”

Kokichi stares at him a moment longer, hands fixed on Shuichi’s shoulders, breath trapped in his mouth. Then he lets it out in a sigh, steps back, sinks back into his chair. “Say it, then. But I’m getting a doctor in the next minute, so you better hurry.”

“I’m sorry for not telling you about the bangle- I didn’t know if it would work, and I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

Kokichi narrows his eyes. “Well, that was incredibly stupid of you. Seriously, idiot, you didn’t even think about telling me that ‘oh, I might be fine?’ Jesus christ, Shuichi, I thought you were dead!”

“Would you have stopped trying to kill yourself if I told you?” Shuichi asks. Kokichi glares harder. “Then- then it doesn’t matter. It would have hurt more if I had told you and then had actually died, right?”

Kokichi scoffs, throwing up his hands and standing up. “Oh, that’s so sweet. So you’re sorry for not telling me but you still think you’re right? Charming, Shumai, really, that’s just-”

Shuichi pushes himself up again, because he doesn’t feel like lying down for this conversation, even if it hurts his whole body. “Yeah, I am! I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry for all of it, but I would do it again! Like I’m sorry for cutting off your communication and I’m sorry for punching you and pulling your hair and shoving your head down and-” He cuts himself up, because the memory of the fight is so awful he can barely face it. “I’m sorry for k-kissing you, and I’m sorry for lying to you and I’m sorry for letting Maki watch you because I know you’re scared of her, and I’m so fucking sorry Kokichi but I would do it all again. I would do anything to make sure you’re safe.” He balls up his hands into the hospital sheets, notes distantly that the beeping has increased dramatically. He lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m so sorry.”

Kokichi just stares, arms crossed, face unreadable. “I’m not scared of Harukawa,” he says, eventually.

Shuichi lets out a small laugh, barely more than air, and he shuts his eyes again, looks away from that- that expression, that closed-off, unreadable expression that makes him so afraid he’s ruined everything. He can feel tears building up, does his best to push them back- he won’t guilt Kokichi into anything. “I’m sorry,” he says, as evenly as he can. “If you- if you want to move out, or… or take a step back, or something, I just. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you sit here with me.”

“Idiot,” Kokichi mutters. 

Shuichi shuts his eyes tighter. “I’m sorry I’ve made you worry so much. I’m sorry I did all that to you knowing how it would hurt you. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it easier. I’m sorry for dancing with you, and staying close to you, instead of pushing away to make it easier, Kokichi, I’m- I’m so sorry. I know how awful it was. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay, I get the message-”

“I’m sorry for making you feel like you had to die,” Shuichi whispers. “I am so sorry. That was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“Shuichi.”

“Please go home, Kokichi, you look so tired,” he whispers. He feels worse than he has since…. Since he first woke up. From the first killing game. From the real one, the fake one, whatever. It’s the same thing all over again.  
Will it ever end? Will they heal from this, only to be dragged somewhere else? Will they ever truly be safe?

Silence stretches out for a few minutes. It is excruciating.

“I’m going to get a doctor,” Kokichi decides. Shuichi listens to him turn on his heel and march out. 

Somehow, he feels worse. Somehow, he feels like he ruined that interaction. Zero out of five stars, Saihara. This dating simulator had some pretty nasty surprises, huh? So sorry, better luck next time! Not that you want a next time. Not that you think anyone else will ever be able to understand you, connect with your experiences, understand and not undervalue them, in the way that Kokichi has. Not that you like anyone else as much as you like him, surprisingly and overwhelmingly so. Not that you think every person you meet is lovable, but somehow this one climbed inside your chest and took up all that restless admiration for himself.  
He stretches out his legs, curls his toes. Then his fingers. Then he sits up. Everything moves properly, at least, except for the odd weakness he feels, a draining heaviness that seems to take up space in each of his muscles. The sound of footsteps echoes outside. Shuichi blinks, several times, sinks into the uncomfortable bed and it’s thin mattress, and wishes…. Wishes everything was different. Wishes nothing had happened. Wishes he had woken up on the couch and it had all been just a dream.  
The footsteps grow faster, louder. Shuichi sits up and looks over at the door as Kokichi bursts back in, panting, still glaring, his eyes shining in the blue light of the hospital lamps. 

He points at Shuichi, finger shaking, and then drops it, his expression twisted up. “You- Hhhrh.” He screws up his hands, clearly struggling for the right words. “I’m not- I am mad at you.” He bites his lip. “But I… I understand your intentions.” His head droops a little, and he stares at the ground, seeming just as frustrated. “I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have done the same.”

“Ko-”

“But!” And he straightens up again, burning with some need to talk, and his eyes really are wet now, and his whole face is open and pained and honest. “That doesn’t mean- It fucking sucked, Shuichi, it sucked so bad. All of it, obviously, but I-” he inhales, sharply. “I thought you were dead. And then I thought you were dying. They told me, they said- I thought I was watching you fucking die.” His chest is heaving when he finishes speaking, and Shuichi can’t look away.  
A moment of silence passes between them. Kokichi’s voice is low, raw, when he speaks again. “Shuichi, I don’t know what to do now.”

Shuichi bites his lip. A tear spills down his cheek. “I don’t, either,” he whispers. 

Kokichi keeps staring, struggling to keep his own composure. “The worst part,” he whispers, “is thinking you were leaving me alone. And I-” Rough, desperate breaths, almost choking on them, as he looks down to the ground. “I just want to go home with you. And we can’t, you’ve got- you’ve got to stay here, and all the others- and they put it up online, and I just-”

“Can I hold you?” Shuichi asks, softly, not moving. “I- I feel fine, really, but if you-”

“I hate you,” Kokichi mutters, scrubbing at his eyes. But he moves over, slowly, and he sinks his weight into the side of the bed. Neither of them move for a moment, and then Shuichi shuffles up a little, and Kokichi shuffles sideways, and slowly, slowly, he extends an arm. 

Kokichi leans in. Shuichi closes his eyes. Kokichi wraps his arms around him. Shuichi mimics the gesture.

They hold each other as tight as they can, just clinging onto some- some thing, between them, some beautiful, terrible thing that has them fighting each other to keep it safe.  
“I’m sorry,” Shuichi whispers.

“For the record,” Kokichi says, and his voice is shaking. “I’m sorry, too. For… for biting you so hard. And for kicking you, and trying to choke you. And I’m sorry that… that I tried to leave you alone, like you tried to do to me.” He goes quiet, for a moment. “It was unfair to make… to make that, the last thing I said.”

Shuichi squeezes his eyes shut. He buries his face in Kokichi’s hair. “It felt really awful,” he whispers. “For a moment, I thought I was too late. It felt like I _died.”_

“It felt like that when I saw the bracelet,” Kokichi mutters. Neither of them laugh, but it feels like maybe they should. “I’m still really angry.”

“I know.”

“You made- you make me feel so vulnerable and I don’t like it. And it really- it really hit me all at once. Especially when I couldn’t talk. I felt _awful.”_ Kokichi’s voice is steady, but every word is heavy, dropping in painfully.

Shuichi closes his eyes. He knows. He’d known, at the time. He’d known how hard it had been for Kokichi, and he had no idea how to fix it. He’d done his best. Part of doing his best involved doing things he’s going to regret forever. It’s not fair, to have been put in a situation like that. It’s not fair, to be forced to learn that ‘I’d give my life for you’ wasn’t just a hypothetical. 

“Stop crying,” Kokichi says, and his voice isn’t quite as steady. 

Shuichi blinks, reaches up to touch the inner corner of his eye. His fingers come back wet. “Sorry.”

“You know they.” Kokichi takes a slow inhale. Curls his fingers into Shuichi’s shirt. “They broadcast it. The game. The second one. It was… well, it was this rabid group of fans, obviously, but-”

“They had to have help,” Shuichi wipes his hand down on the side of the bed. “They would have needed some way to get us all together, to get in the gym, to know so much about us.”

“Yeah.” Kokichi is quiet for a moment, and then he shuffles just a bit closer. “So, uh. They were showing it to this ‘exclusive fangroup’ or whatever but it got leaked.” Silence, except for the sound of Shuichi’s uneven, heavy breathing. “So a lot of it is on the internet now.”

“Are we-”

“Yep.”

Awkward, stiff. The air in the room is like paper, getting crumpled smaller and smaller. “I am so sorry,” Shuichi breathes. “God. Kokichi. I’m-”

Kokichi sits up, frowning, and pokes Shuichi in the side of the head. “Hey. Dumbass. You had a lot more on your mind than worrying about who would see the hypothetical recording of us being idiots _if_ we survived.”

“I knew they were recording it.” Shuichi presses a hand against his face. “I’m such an idiot. God. Why did that not register? That they were watching everything? I-”

“Hey.” Kokichi pokes him again. “You weren’t the only one who forgot. And-” He crosses his arms and looks away, inhaling sharply. “Sure, things are pretty weird with the others, and the doctors here either think I'm adorable or disgusting, but I don’t really give a shit about what a bunch of strangers think about me, so.”

Shuichi looks up at him. “You shouldn’t be comforting me.”

“You almost died, fuckhead.” Kokichi’s frowning again. Shuichi can’t tell what any of this means. “Now- sit still. I’m going to actually go and get a doctor now, okay?” He slips away easily, off the bed, and rocks on his feet when he lands on them. Ouma Kokichi, in … one of Shuichi’s hoodies, actually, in too-big jeans and sneakers. “We’ll talk more about this later.”

“Wait-” Shuichi can’t help it. He reaches a hand out, lets it fall, limp, in the air. 

Kokichi reaches the door and turns around, hand on the frame. He raises an eyebrow.

“Are we….” he licks his lips. “Are we okay?” Okay. As if that’s any way to put it. As if he should be bothering Kokichi with something so stupid. 

Kokichi’s mouth twitches, just for a moment, and then he’s scowling again, crossing his arms. “Try not to die in the next few days, Saihara, and we’ll see.”  
And then once again, he’s disappearing through the door.

Shuichi sinks back into the bed and closes his eyes. Then he sits up again and rolls over, because he’s got too much to think about, restless energy humming through his whole body.

The table of gifts is morbid and cheerful all at once. Teddy bears from Kaito, chocolates from Kaede, bunches and bunches of flowers and card after card. He sorts through a few, and they immediately make him too sad to continue.  
(The worst is from Himiko- a card, earnest and heartfelt, written about how much she cares for him and how much she views him as an older brother- written like she’s certain he’ll get better soon, cheery and full of smiling doodles and magic drawings and covered in tear stains.)

Flowers. Potted succulents. His favourite coffee beans. Coupons for free backrubs. Notes from the VRF, apology and condolence and well wishes. Balloons from everyone floating above it all.

And tucked away, almost hidden between another box of sweets and a little wooden toy, is a very small book- gold leaf on the side of the pages, bound in grey leather.  
The best of Sherlock Holmes, the cover reads. He sits back in the bed and opens it.

In the first page, under the title and the enscription, there is a little drawing- two people, standing on a balcony, one with neat hair except for the one, stubborn strand that never stays down, the other with a mess of fluff and twisted curls. Around their feet, a collection of pot plants sit- two blueberry bushes in the corner, the berries drawn on like little shining globes. They’re standing so close their arms brush- that the way their pinky fingers link together, holding each other tight, is almost hidden between their bodies.

It’s drawn in sparkly, purple pen, the kind that Shuichi’s used to seeing all over his notes and his research and nowhere else. 

_Get well soon, Shumai._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashback central chapter here whoaaaa
> 
> Hey you ever think about how INSTRUMENTAL miu is to v3? How clever and important she is to the plot? How shes literally so brilliant? Me too. I love her.
> 
> (hey. thanks for sticking with me! im sorry this took so long, and im even more sorry if its kind of disappointing? i promise i did my best. and i promise that the next chapter will be up in your usual two day schedule, because i procrastinated this chapter by writing that one. and i like that chapter a lot better! so. yay!)  
> (but seriously, i adore all of you and your lovely comments and i just- mwah. thank you so much.)
> 
> EDIT: . this chapter is so cursed. there was so much bullshit in here. i am so sorry if u read it before i found the BIG mistakes


	14. forever, lovey-dovey!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kokichi feels vulnerable. He feels angry. He feels trapped. What the fuck is he supposed to do?  
> His current answer is: work. Work and work away on project after project. Shuichi is buried in physical therapy but refuses to stop working, too. He’s always typing away, always on the phone, meeting Akamatsu or Harukawa to discuss the case against Danganronpa. His face is all over the internet, his words making headlines. He’s exhausted, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow. Kokichi helps, in small ways. He starts making dinner more often. He refills the coffee machine. He annotates all the notes the same way he always does, with cute drawings and little jokes and references and he hopes that it makes things easier instead of painful. He tells Shuichi, flat-out, to come to bed (couch) if it gets too late. They have Talks where he tells him to take a break, but he doesn’t press too hard. Because he gets it. He gets it. He’s like that, too.  
> It’s easier to fill up your mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hii......................................................................... im not dead
> 
> im! alive!! i just had!!! a bit of a depressive slump and decided i hated my writing :,) and i had zero motivation and felt bad about it. but i already had like 80% of this written i just couldn't finish it and..... ugh. this chapter was meant to have more scenes but somehow it.... didn't. and my energy's still a bit low so! just this for now! next one in a couple days, probably. 
> 
> my timing for disappearing was really bad because the wonderful senju-swag on tumblr drew some just. incredible art for this fic. (will link in the end notes.) PLEASE look at it i actually cried over it a little, it is AMAZING and also my phone and laptop background now. (my background is just. a slideshow of lovely art people drew for me it is so nice)
> 
> i think there are typos in here but i hate editing and you cant make me do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's very rambly. but hopefully romantic. pls enjoy.

**_LEAKED FOOTAGE OF DANGANRONPA SPIN-OFF KILLING GAME!_ **

**_A BATTLE OF LOVE AND DEATH- WATCH SAIHARA AND OUMA’S BATTLE HERE!_ **

**_DANGANRONPA GONE TOO FAR? FANS REPORT BACK._ **

**_WHO IS BEHIND THE KIDNAPPING OF OUTSPOKEN ULTIMATES?_ **

**_VRF NEEDS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DEATHS, DANGANRONPA SAYS_ **

**_SUSPECTS AWAITING TRIAL ON ACCOUNTS OF KIDNAPPING AND TORTURE_ **

**_SAIHARA SHUICHI DEAD???_ **

**shslgoreblog:** i feel physically sick.   
**> shslgoreblog:** i’ve never felt like a bad person for being a danganronpa fan before.

 **ultimatelosr:** i can’t believe it. i keep rewatching the scenes. people really did die.

 **foxxxy:** lmao anyone holding out hope for saihara is an idiot. he’s dead and they just don’t want to tell us.

 **ivydreams:** did they really kiss? the angle of the video was so off it was hard to tell….   
**> matchakiss:** does it fucking matter? guy was about to confess his love for god’s sake.   
**> >ultimatelosr:** i felt my stomach drop through my spine when i heard that. it was so, so awful.

 **gingersnp:** I can't imagine what they must be going through. I am so sorry and angry for every member of the cast.

 **naggito:** OK BUT IT’S NOT DANGANRONPA’S FAULT. THEY SAID THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. I DON’T SEE HOW IT HAS TO AFFECT OUR SHOW

 **junkyjunko:** omggggg i thought ousai was such a crack ship i cant believe its canon now. ugh they always make the antags gay…..   
**> glassshark:** there’s something wrong with you.

 **finchheart:** ive been a danganronpa fan for years- im one of the people who was talking about how it should be changed, not stopped completely. but after watching those clips i just dont know anymore. saihara and oumas fight was the worst thing ive ever seen. and im one of the people who watched the footage of the murders, too. obviously all of it was bad. all of it sucked and im ashamed that i had any kind of support for the people who would let this happen, but i just. watching that fight and the way they struggled so desperately. It felt awful. I felt awful for seeing it.

 **salty:** Remember to donate to the VRF’s gofundme! Let’s all do our part to help out the cast!   
**> moonrabbit:** “cast” they’re REAL PEOPLE   
**> >chocoboy:** well theyre still characters right?   
**> >>gingersnp:** They stopped being characters the moment the simulation ended.   
**> >>>marbles:** maybe even before that.

 **darlings:** i dont know if i feel alright buying merch of these people anymore.

\--

Shuichi is out for two weeks, which is pretty much exactly the time period that crosses over from ‘it might be okay’ to ‘yeah he won’t be waking up for a while’. The day he does wake up, actually, has Kokichi vomiting in the hospice bathrooms only a few hours before, clutching at the sides of the bowl and shaking. It’s almost as bad as the three desperate days before Shuichi was stabilized, when there were concerns about his heart giving out, or being unable to identify the poison, or it having scarred his liver too badly, and we’ll need to remove one of his lungs- and Kokichi is standing outside the intensive care unit with fifteen other ragtag teams, including Shirogane who had no fucking right to be there, none at all, and a doctor stepped out and set her hand on his shoulder and told him, very gently, that it was unlikely Shuichi would pull through.

But he did. And he did wake up. So there. 

He’s in the hospital for another week before they let him leave, and he comes home with so much medication that their flat looks like a drug dealer’s warehouse and he has to set alarms for when he can and can’t eat, because some of it needs to be taken with food and some on an empty stomach, and he has to go back to the hospital every now and again for them to monitor how his one remaining lung is doing and if there was any musculature damage, and he has a wheelchair that Kokichi has to force him into, because the doctors explicitly said that just because he _can_ walk, doesn’t mean he should, especially if it’s causing him intense pain, _Saihara._

But Shuichi is back. Which is good. It’s good. Sure, Kokichi is still waiting for him to drop dead at any moment, still has nightmares of that night in the sewers, of their fight in the dorms, of his hands around Shuichi’s neck and then blood suddenly drips from his mouth and they’re back again. But it’s fine. 

They Talk. Capital T. They have several, actually, sitting across from each other on the couch and both apologizing, and everyone always told Kokichi that communication was key and that all his problems would be solved if he just opened up- and, well. They do help. He does start feeling a little better, after a while, about parts of stuff- the resentment dies away after a really sweet conversation where they both cry a bit. 

_“I’m- god, Kokichi, I’m so sorry.”_ _  
_ _“Stop crying.”_ _  
_ _“You- I. sorry.”_ _  
_ _“You knew it was going to hurt me.”_ _  
_ _“I did. I did.”_ _  
_ _“I felt really fucking vulnerable.”_ _  
_ _“And you hate feeling like that.”_ _  
_ _“....At least you know, I guess.”_ _  
_ _“I do- and I feel bad about it every day. I would never do it in any lighter circumstances, I swear. I am so sorry. I removed your agency. I wish I hadn’t.”_ _  
_ _“I wish you hadn’t, too.”_ _  
_ _“...I’m sorry.”_ _  
_ _“I would’ve done the same.”_   
But they’ve just got so many problems, so much shit to work through, that it’s hard to get it all out with just a Talk. Even with multiple Talks. Even when they’re both going to therapy and have had a few sessions together. There is just so much. The therapists say it will take time. Kokichi keeps thinking of new things to bring up and never knowing the right time to do so. 

_“I acknowledge your pain.”_ _  
_ _“I acknowledge yours.”_ _  
_ _“Now what?”_

He’s still angry, of course, and a lot of their Talks revolve around how betrayed he felt, how unpleasant the whole experience was. Shuichi is sorry, sorry beyond words, and Kokichi knows. He knows it’s not like he… wanted to do any of it, to tape his mouth shut and make him useless and quiet, and he knows Shuichi didn’t want to fight him- that a lot of that particular fight was Kokichi escalating it, actually, but he was the one who lost so he feels like he’s earned at least a bit of resentment there. Still, he does apologize. Because he is sorry. Because he hates that he hurt Shuichi. 

They even try to talk about their feelings, like proper adults and stuff, but that goes nowhere fast. It doesn’t help that everyone else is trying to get Kokichi to talk about his feelings- Momota and Akamatsu, who get doors slammed in their faces and their numbers blocked, the VRF reaching out, even ultimate composer Oshiro sending him a document about the high rates of LGBT teenagers who try to join Danganronpa, telling him she’s like that too, he’s not alone, she bets a lot of his friends are like that too, yadda yadda. As if Kokichi’s ever been concerned about his _sexuality,_ of all things. As if he isn’t fully aware that the rest of their class are equally flaming homos. (Except Momota, maybe. Momota’s vibes are weird. He’s either bi and an idiot or straight and an idiot. Not like Kokichi cares.) And then there’s the whole goddamn internet, too, who just have to have a say in the dramatic turbulence of Kokichi’s love life. 

He comes home one day and passes Shuichi’s bedroom, and catches the barest snippet of a conversation; Shuichi, talking about upcoming interviews, how he’s healthy and fine, he’ll be happy to speak, and then. _“I won’t talk about my relationship with Ouma Kokichi. Please tell them that ahead of time, it’s not my-”_

Kokichi walks away before he can hear anymore of it. 

Shuichi’s repurposed his bedroom into a work station, probably so he can avoid Kokichi as much as possible. He’s doing that a lot. Avoiding him. Giving him space. Trying to keep all his medication together and take up as little room in their apartment as possible, as if that’s fucking helpful at all. At least he doesn’t sleep in there, too.

Kokichi is mad. So Shuichi sleeps on the couch. But Kokichi misses Shuichi, so he also sleeps on the couch. So neither of them win, and their pile of couch-blankets grows. They try and talk about it, but it just becomes another Talk about how Shuichi almost died, and it goes round and round in circles like it even matters anymore.

One day, Momota comes up to fetch Shuichi (because they still go to the gym, only Shuichi’s workouts are now much stricter and given to him by a physical therapist, and there’s barely even a point because he can’t stand up for too long, he should be resting, he shouldn’t be going out with idiot Momota and fucking Harukawa who keeps trying to be _civil_ to Kokichi which only serves to be more disturbing.)   
Momota looks over at the blankets on the couch and he, jokingly, says “still in the doghouse, bro?”

And Kokichi, who had just stepped into the living room to grab his phone, turns on his heel before he can see Shuichi’s expression. 

It just sucks. A lot. It feels like Danganronpa won. Hooray, the season 53 contestants are still alive! (Shirogane could have afforded to go.) Hooray, literally none of them can function without regular panic attacks anymore. Hooray, they don’t feel safe at home, don’t feel safe with each other, can’t meet for baseball anymore or go out in public without being hounded- this uneasy sense of safety, of peace that they’ve built over the last eleven months is gone for good. Kokichi has to sleep with his head on Shuichi’s chest, listening to his heart. Every time he steps into the shower, he sees blood. He still smells the sewers, sometimes- every electronic beep or jingle makes him twitch. Every time he goes outside, he wonders if there’s someone waiting to pick him up and throw him into death again. 

They all have matching scars now, bracelets that were hooked into their skin now removed, a scrape of needles circling their wrists. Shuichi scratches his, digs his nails around the scar. Kokichi goes to bed and scrolls through articles about how much people hate him, think he’s disgusting. He likes to read the fanfiction where he really does die, written by people who still blame him just as much as Shuichi for ending the game. He likes to read the comments, look for the few posted by normal people.

 **andtheywereroommates** says: this is literally so fucked. they are real people and this is a real thing that happened. i cant even begin to imagine how traumatizing it must have been. you’re a sick freak and going to hell.   
**ultimatefreak** says: lmao blocked. don’t like don’t read.

 **kinghorse** says: hey this was super realistic. very sexy. I came four times to the thought of ouma’s head rolling around on the ground and now my dick is broken, so i will probably be suing. Not for the identity impersonation or the unsettling gore written about me, but because it was just SO HOT my dick broke. (my eyes arent grey, fuckhead. did you even watch the show?)

So that’s fun. He’s already had several people write callout posts about him for being a troll. He usually responds by pointing out they have all technically written WHOLE ASS child pornography based on past seasons, and not only are they probably going to hell but also jail.

Ha. 

_“Kokichi.”_ _  
_ _“Saihara.”_ _  
_ _“D- Hh. Um. Are you doing okay?”_ _  
_ _“Never better! I was just about to go and shave Miu’s whole head. So if you don’t miiind…”_

Kokichi feels vulnerable. He feels angry. He feels trapped. What the fuck is he supposed to do?   
His current answer is: work. Work and work away on project after project. Shuichi is buried in physical therapy but refuses to stop working, too. He’s always typing away, always on the phone, meeting Akamatsu or Harukawa to discuss the case against Danganronpa. His face is all over the internet, his words making headlines. He’s exhausted, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow. Kokichi helps, in small ways. He starts making dinner more often. He refills the coffee machine. He annotates all the notes the same way he always does, with cute drawings and little jokes and references and he hopes that it makes things easier instead of painful. He tells Shuichi, flat-out, to come to bed (couch) if it gets too late. They have Talks where he tells him to take a break, but he doesn’t press too hard. Because he gets it. He gets it. He’s like that, too.   
It’s easier to fill up your mind.   
When Shuichi is out and the landline rings, he picks it up and he flips through their joint diary and if he can, he resolves the problem there. If he can’t, he leaves names and numbers and requests for Shuichi like a devoted secretary. People are always a little pleased to hear from him, always try to coax him into making an appearance on X tv show or Y radio station. He turns them down with a charming laugh and then he throws rocks off the balcony.

Kokichi starts writing- he’s never bothered to learn the structure of a solid essay beyond the basic introduction, three paragraphs of blah, conclusion. But he’s a clever writer, and he’s emotive, and he’s manipulative, and he writes a lot. He publishes things anonymously, articles and blog posts told from the opinion of Just Another Danganronpa Fan, who’s had their mind changed and pleads with others to change their minds, too. He replies so sweetly to every comment. He is saccharine and polite and holds back his cruelty, because no matter how fair or righteous his anger is, people don’t care about fairness. They don’t care about right or wrong or human suffering- they care that the stranger on the internet is going to cradle them, pat them on the head and tell them they’re a good person but could they please stop committing absolutely abhorrent acts? You’re so valid, I felt the same way! I just think we need to value these real people’s lives more than a tv show. Is that fair to say? I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.  
He hates it, and them, and every baby who is so desperate to cling to their torture porn and who would never take him seriously if he stopped babying them. Anger is not the best way to manipulate people- it’s politeness, saccharine words, seeming to agree with everything they say. Slowly changing their opinion on this one topic. You’ve got to be nice, and sweet, and patient, and make them feel like agreeing with you makes them a good person. People love to feel like a good person. 

At least manipulating people is easy. It’s like working retail- boring, hateful, annoying, but you can at least kind of switch your mind off. He thinks, at least. He’s never worked a proper job, but the cashiers at the stores he visits always seem kind of checked out. (Probably because he only goes out past midnight, bundled up with his hair covered, his face covered, mask and glasses and big black sweaters.) When he’s not emotionally scamming people, he’s organizing pranks, making detailed, elaborate plans, gathering the ingredients, never pulling them off. He will, though. When he’s in the right mood. For the moment, he just has a bunch of paint and glitter in his closet. 

Shuichi has days where his pain is so severe he can’t move from the couch, and Kokichi thinks _that’s my fault._ And he thinks _he should be in bed,_ but the moment he tries to bring it up, Shuichi starts spiralling into guilt. It’s hard not to look at each other and feel guilty- Kokichi with his fucking mess of issues, who wakes up every few hours to check Shuichi is still breathing, who still feels bitter and useless. Shuichi, with his actual, physical disabilities and pain that Kokichi feels like shit for even comparing himself too. He feels awful for being angry. He feels like his own emotions should be shoved aside while he takes care of him. He used to be so _good_ at putting his emotions aside. He doesn’t know why he can’t, now. He doesn’t know why he can’t just get over himself and go back to being in that soft, sappy state they were in before. Or even, better, like he remembers being before the game.   
THe only people he’s ever cared about were DICE, and he can’t… he can’t even begin to relate that to this. To the way he feels about the other people in the simulation. To the way he feels about Shuichi. 

Things are rough. It might be easier if they were rough all the time- if Shuichi couldn’t look at him, if they were silent, if they slept in separate bedrooms. But they don’t, and it isn’t, and Kokichi is stuck on this awful, awful mushy feeling of being soft and happy and then feeling cold and alone and violated. He thinks about how angry he was with his mouth taped shut, and then Shuichi makes him breakfast and he casually asks about how the case is going, and then they’re both laughing and it’s wonderful. 

Because even in the game, even in the trials when Kokichi was playing evil and Shuichi was calling him out- even when they were fresh out of the simulation and broken into pieces, even when they kept fighting and when they barely had time to talk to each other, they get along. They have always gotten along, in this weird, dynamic way, where even when things are uncomfortable it’s still easy to enjoy himself. 

_“Hey, dumbass.”_ _  
_ _“Huh?”_ _  
_ _“Come to bed. Or… couch, or whatever.”_ _  
_ _“It’s only ten-”_ _  
_ _“You were up at four in the morning today and I can see you falling asleep. C’mon. I found this really shitty movie I want to watch.”_ _  
_ _“...Well, I guess that would be nicer than what I’m currently doing. Shall I make us some popcorn?”_ _  
_ _“Make some tea, too. I’ll go set it up.”_

So things are. Good. And they’re bad. And they’re complicated. Shuichi is good, but worrying about him is bad. Miu and Gonta are good. Going out to meet them is bad. Therapy has gotten significantly harder. He can’t tell if it’s good or bad. Everything is just so much, so much that he wishes he didn’t care at all. He feels like he’s feeling everything, all at once. He wishes he wasn’t. 

But Kokichi has bought brand new blueberry bushes, and he’s planted a row of herbs along their kitchen sill. It’s funny, because Shuichi was the one who bought all the plants, first, but now Kokichi is the one who looks after them. Still, Shuichi collects their coffee grounds for the blueberries, and he has two separate composts, and he sometimes brings home little succulents or packets of seeds as a present. He also brings home cakes, and fancy, rich, milk, and snippings of articles he thinks Kokichi might like. Kokichi buys another string of colored fairy lights and hangs them up in his bedroom, and he sets on his favourite song and dances alone in the dim color. Shuichi sits on the floor and rearranges his books, again and again, buys new ones, swaps them in and out, and Kokichi sits on the couch and sips lattes made with their new syrups and watches him.   
It rains, and Shuichi forgets his umbrella, and Kokichi rides the train all the way to the VRF base so he can drop it off, and then he sticks around to talk with Amami, who is as friendly as ever even if he looks more haunted than any human should be able to carry. They play checkers until Amami gets dragged off by Yumeno to discuss the Real Life Killing Game, and Kokichi plays against himself- until twenty minutes later, Shuichi comes jogging out and is flushed and happy to see him, and says that he cut the meeting short and does he want to get lunch?   
He does, so they grab Shuichi’s wheelchair and Kokichi makes him sit in it even though he protests he can walk across the street. They open the umbrella and prop it up against the back, and Kokichi leans down under it, only inches from the back of Shuichi’s head. Kokichi pushes him and starts running, and he makes jokes about drag racing and getting Miu to fit it with a motor, and they laugh and shriek and almost mow down pedestrians. He can hear the wheels rattling, Shuichi laughing almost desperately, his own shoes slapping down over the wet pavement. They go to a cafe and park it outside and a few pedestrians stare at Shuichi like they’re witnessing a miracle when he stands up, which makes him very embarrassed and Kokichi very delighted. They eat lunch. Shuichi takes his medication, talks about how he’s almost finished with this cycle of antibiotics, about how he’s trying to take less painkillers, too. Kokichi asks about the meeting, and Shuichi says they were trying to figure out who exactly arranged the game- they’ve taken a few people into custody, but they’re sure there were more. He asks about Kokichi’s latest project, and Kokichi tells him about how he wants to convince Momota that his apartment is haunted, which is why he has all the tape recorders and the invisible ink and the fake blood. Shuichi, of course, disapproves, but he laughs when Kokichi, gesturing with a pair of chopsticks, flatly tells him that it might be the push he needs to finally drag Harukawa into living with him.

Shuichi insists he wants to the train, so they do, umbrella held between them, and Kokichi watches Shuichi’s face for pain or weakness and Shuichi watches his for- something, and they have to take a break because Shuichi starts breathing funny but it’s fine, it’s fine to sit down on a bench and hold the umbrella between them and watch the people going past. 

They go home. They make dinner. They spend the whole day together, some of it working on deductions and theories about the people behind their captivity, some of it playing games- more chess, then mario kart, then monopoly. They order in, and they put on a horror movie, and they curl up close on the couch and listen to the rain on the window. 

And they have days like that, and then they have days when Shuichi is gone the whole time, and they have days when Kokichi is manic and restless and can’t talk to him. Momota and Harukawa, Yumeno and Akamatsu, all these smiling people come and drag Shuichi away, and Kokichi hates them and is relieved and misses him and enjoys the solitude. They don’t Talk about this restless jealousy.

Time passes. There are a few more barely-celebrated birthdays- nobody’s really felt like making a big deal of it. Kokichi didn’t even notice when his passed, what, five months ago? (There’d been an agreement made, earlier on- they didn’t even know their real birthdays or ages. It seemed stupid to celebrate them.) Then it’s the anniversary of the last season of Danganronpa! They meet up in the VRF, and they have bodyguards and security, and they have a party. It’s nice. There’s music. He dances. There’s food. He eats. There’s people, and he talks to them. The whole thing feels melancholy, only that’s too gentle a word for it- there are too many emotions here, too much energy, sad and happy, conversations overlapping in the best-worst ways. They go home. Shuichi cries, that night, burying his head in Kokichi’s hair, and Kokichi stares with dry eyes over their living room and he feels so many things at once that he doesn’t know what to say.

Time passes.

Kokichi sits on the floor, biting his lip. He’s in his apartment, with its new set of pot plants, with Shuichi’s books still spilled, untouched, around the shelves. It is evening. It is still raining. He is utterly and completely alone.   
Shuichi’s out for… physical therapy or something, something important. He’d said goodbye before he left that afternoon- hovered in the doorway like he’d have liked to say more, and then he’d been gone and Kokichi had been thinking of him all day. He’s been out a lot, lately. Always with Akamatsu, or Momota, or Harukawa, or nameless foundation workers. Kokichi’s been at home.

Everything feels awful- like there’s this nice, shiny past that’s hanging over his head. Like there’s this nice, shiny future, too, that he can’t quite… reach. New barriers have been erected here. His song hums away on a laptop, resting on the corner of the couch, and his lights flash in their multitude of soft colors, and it is all lovely and painful and empty. How much had he fantasized about this place when stuck in that awful game? How many of those fantasies had involved Shuichi?  
(All of them. All of them.)

Kokichi, after almost chewing a hole in his lip, reaches for his phone. It’s stupid. He’s stupid. But he types in Shuichi’s number anyway. He doesn’t need to, obviously, he has his number, but there’s something comforting about the action, the reassurance that it’s there, that he knows how to get to him no matter what. (He wonders if he’d still sit there and do this if Shuichi had died, just to hear his voice mail once more. He wonders why he can’t stop thinking about it.) 

It rings. Twice. Three times. Four. Just when he’s about to give up, it clicks, and there is Shuichi, sounding breathless and worried. “Kokichi?” He asks, and there is so much…. Something in his voice, that he has to squeeze his eyes shut. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He twists his fingers in his hair. This was a bad idea. “Um. Are you on break?”

He can hear Shuichi shifting, lowering the phone to murmur at someone. Kokichi hears the word _important_ and his heart turns. “Yeah, my therapist says it’s okay to take five now. I’ve gone through most of the stretches already…. What’s wrong? Do you need me to come home?”

Yes. No. “I just….” Kokichi takes a breath. “I wanted to talk.”

Shuichi laughs, nervously. “Well, you’ve got me now.”

“Sure do.” He pulls at his hair, tense, frustrated. “Um. How are you?”

“.........Good? Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“Can’t we just talk? Or are we in a state where even that’s too much for us?” The words come out mocking, overly-cheerful, childish. Kokichi doesn’t know how not to be a nuisance.

“Uh. No. I mean- I’m not. I.” Something ruffles, and Shuichi’s breath has changed when he speaks again. “I’m just finishing up now, really. I’m a bit sore, but I’m building up my stamina again. My doctor thinks that the long-term damage can be minimized if I keep a good exercise routine- it’s just my lung that’s giving me trouble, now. She doesn’t think there’s any nerve damage or anything, which is. Really good. She says I can probably live a pretty normal life- apparently I can still play sport and stuff, just got to. Keep an eye on my medications and take it easy.”

At some point during that, Kokichi had closed his eyes. He opens them again, calls out in a song. “That’s greeeeat, Shumai!”

And it is. It is great. It’s amazing how reassuring it is to hear all about how Shuichi’s going to be fine. It’s amazing, how just hearing it soothes a panic that Kokichi didn’t know was there. How it makes him melt against the couch and close his eyes and feel like everything’s okay.

Shuichi laughs, softly. “I- I guess it is. I was pretty worried I wouldn’t be able to get… out of the hospital, for a while. I have to keep reminding myself how lucky I am.”

“What’s left of your workout?”

More ruffling. “Um, just trying to work on flexibility and reflexes. I’m still healing in some places… oh, and then after that, I’m going to drop by the VRF, and I’ll probably go see Kaede after that.”

“You’re seeing Kaede later?” Kokichi stares down at his lap. Flexes his fingers.

Shuichi’s voice comes through a little awkwardly. “Um, yeah? Is that a problem?”

“You saw Kaede yesterday.” He doesn’t know why he’s so stuck on this.

“Yeah. She took on a new project with Oshiro-san and I’m trying to help out.”

“But you saw her yesterday.”

Shuichi laughs, quietly. “Can’t I see her again today?”

Kokichi curls his fingers round the phone. “Do you have to?”

“Wh- she’s my best friend, of course I have to see her!”

Kokichi glares at the rain out the window. “Oh no, it’s fine. I’ve barely seen you in the last three days, but that’s fine. Feeling super loved and appreciated, here.”

Shuichi’s voice is growing a little more tense. Kokichi wonders how hard he would have to try to make him mad. “You didn’t even _ask._ You don’t exactly always make me feel like you want me around. Let alone that you want me to lov-”

“Well, you haven’t even said it back, yet!” He snaps, and he doesn’t know why. It’s so childish, stupid, cheesy. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to hear it, because he doesn’t even care what Shuichi thinks of him. There are more important things. 

“What- I did!” Shuichi sounds indignant. “I did say it!”

“It doesn’t count if you were dying, dickhead,” Kokichi hisses into the phone, twists his fingers further into his hair, pulls. The pain is sharp, a little comforting. 

Shuichi makes a soft sound on the other side of the phone, like it pained him to hear that. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay, well- I. You haven’t said it either, so I just-”

“Yeah, because I’m mad at you.”

“Wh- see?” Shuichi sounds confused, hurt, but after a moment he seems to swallow it back, and his voice grows softer. “Kokichi, you’ve been… I’ve been feeling like I need to give you space. I don’t- I don’t want to push you into anything, or pressure you, especially when it seems like things have… have changed.”

“My feelings haven’t.” He presses the phone closer to his face. God that was cheesy. How embarrassing. “I mean, they have. Anger is now involved.”

“You’ve always been a little angry at me,” Shuichi says, softly. 

Kokichi closes his eyes, leaning against the phone like it might hold him up. “I’ve never liked how much I care about you. But I do. And I especially don’t like it now.”

Shuichi is quiet for a moment. “What do you want, Kokichi? Because… anything, anything that can make it up to you, make things easier… I don’t mind.”

“I don’t know-” Kokichi dials back his anger, takes a breath. Shuichi is so frustrating. This is why he hates nice people. “What do _you_ want?”

“You to be happy,” Shuichi replies, almost instantly, and Kokichi is a second away from throwing his phone at the wall. “I mean it,” he adds. “I… Obviously I’ve been thinking about you. A lot. And… being with you.” It sounds a little stilted when he says it, his voice crumpled like paper. “But- but mostly I just think about you smiling- properly smiling, when you’re really pleased about something. I really miss it.”

“I’ve been kind of distracted,” Kokichi mumbles, looking out at the sky, all the plants sitting on their balcony. He wants to see Shuichi smile, too, he realizes. He wants to see him be happy again- really happy, like just for a moment he can shrug off his work and be there, be present and smiling and warm. He misses it. He misses when Shuichi would ruffle his hair without thinking, would reach down and squeeze his hand, would smile at him over a game of chess. Not all of this… ignoring each other just to go and cuddle, saying hello and goodbye and being reserved over dinner. Not Shuichi sneaking out to give him space.   
_I miss you_ , he thinks, and he says, “is it really so easy for you to ignore me all the time?”

“What?”

Kokichi sinks back against the couch, stares at the lights playing on the ceiling. “You’re always out of the house, or with your friends, or working. You only talk to me when you have to.”

Shuichi’s voice goes soft and hesitant. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“You feel guilty, and you think I’m angry, so you’re giving me space to sort myself out,” Kokichi replies dryly. “It’s also probably easier than being around me. We have weird vibes.”

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says, and his voice is so melancholy. “Kokichi, I love you.”

Kokichi’s eyes freeze on the ceiling. Everything seems to go very still, but the lights keep changing color.

“I adore you,” Shuichi continues, and he sounds like he’s choking up a bit. The sounds of the city still echo around him. Is he really doing this in public? “I love you so much. I- I love how you watch things, how you’re always so clearly thinking, and how it’s so hard to figure out what exactly you are thinking- but when I do, it’s always so worth it. I love your face, and your eyes, and your… everything. Being around you makes me so happy- even now, when it hurts at the same time. I want to give you every good thing. I want to be with you as long as we can.” 

“Shuichi-”

“I want to be with you,” Shuichi finishes, breathlessly. “That’s what I want. I want to be with you- properly, I want- I want us to start sharing a proper bed, I want to be able to kiss you when I think about it, I want you to know that every gift I give is given with romantic intention. I like you so much.” 

Kokichi feels dazed. His vision is drifting everywhere. His face feels hot. “Step down from love, just being liked,” he mumbles. 

“Can’t I do both?” Shuichi asks, softly. Kokichi wets his lips. 

“I want you to come home,” he says quietly. “I miss you.”

“I’m leaving right now,” Shuichi says, and true to his word, Kokichi can now hear footsteps, Shuichi pacing down the street. 

“Is that okay?” He rolls sideways on the couch, fiddling with the base of it. “What about Kaede?”

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says, and there’s a bite of fond frustration to it, to the way he says his name. Kokichi likes it. “Yes, she’s been desperate for me to talk to you for ages. And even if she weren’t, she’d understand- she knows you’re important to me.”

Mm. There it is again. _Important._ Kokichi bites his lip, unsure what to do about the new emotion making itself at home in his body, making him shift in place. “I. For the record. I think you’re important, too.”

Shuichi laughs, and it sounds excited, nervous. “I just confessed to you, Kokichi. Is that all I get?” He’s teasing, teasing, but there’s a note of question to his voice, something soft. Like he’d be okay if it really was.

Kokichi twists around, biting his lip. “When… when you get here, I’ll see.” They’ve still got to talk, properly. This doesn’t really count. 

“Thank you,” Shuichi says, softly. And then, “I’m getting a train now, but I’ll see you soon?”

“Yeah.” Kokichi tightens his grip on the phone, bites his lip. “Um. Bye.”

“Goodbye, Kokichi,” Shuichi says. And then, just before Kokichi can hang up- “I love you.”

He hangs up, almost reflexively. And then spends a few minutes hyperventilating, playing the words over and over again in his head.   
What the fuck. You’re not 14, Kokichi. 

But he can’t push back the feelings burning in his chest, the mix of panicked excitement and paranoia and…. Melancholy? Mania? Nausea? Oh. No, that would be happiness.

It’s gross. It sits right below his anxiety, making him warm right through to his fingertips even while he freaks out about the million ways this is a bad idea. It makes him feel stupid and safe. 

_I should get ready,_ Kokichi thinks, and then spends the resulting time rolling around on the floor, jumping every time he hears anything that might sound like footsteps.

When he does hear footsteps, he slowly pushes himself up and takes a seat on the couch- waiting like some kind of impatient judge. The doorknob jiggles and he can hear it unlocking and then the door sticks, like it always does, and then Saihara Shuichi comes rushing through, his hair all windswept and his coat halfway off his left shoulder.

“Elevator broke,” he wheezes. “I ran up the stairs. I’m sorry I’m late.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Kokichi says, despite having not noticed any time passing at all. He crosses his arms. “You better not have damaged yourself.”

“I’m fine,” he says, despite the way he’s gulping for air. “Lung…. just… needs… some… time.”

“God,” Kokichi mutters, and he stands up and walks over. Shuichi’s somehow managed to make struggling for breath look shy and awkward and is probably blocking his own airway with his anxiety, somehow. He reaches over to rub his back, and it’s… weird and uncomfortable. Obviously. But beneath it all there’s this undercurrent of hope/anxiety that won’t let him go. “Stomach out as you breathe in. Slow down. Hold it- let it out now. Breathe in…. Hold it, dumbass, don’t hyperventilate. Out again. Like that, idiot.”

Shuichi’s breathing slows and starts to sound a little less rattly. He laughs, swaying against the doorframe. “Sorry, I just- I had a picture in my head of going to physical therapy but my doctor calls me a- an idiot, every time I mess up.” He makes one last wheezy sound before his breath seems to catch up to itself. He sighs. 

“I’m a pioneer of medicine,” Kokichi responds, dryly. He lowers his hand from Shuichi’s back.

They stare at each other.

“Kokichi, I-”

“Wait,” he says. 

Hurt flashes in Shuichi’s eyes and Kokichi tries to ignore it, inhaling sharply. “I just.” He moves away, steps into the living room. Shuichi follows. Collecting his pride, he looks back at the detective, at the concern on his face, the worry, the sadness, the disappointment- and all the love underneath, everything driven by worry for his wellbeing.   
He collects his pride, and he lets it go.

“I’m sorry,” Kokichi says. “I was really hurt by everything. You- you know that. Obviously. Grass is red. Whatever. But I…” He shuts his eyes. “I was angry with you, even though I would have done the same thing as you, and I felt… stupid for being so mad. But I also- it was hard. It was hard to get over. You took away my communication, restrained me, let me have no say in any of the decisions about me. And you… you tried to leave me alone. You almost died for me. I still hate that. I still- I still hate it.” His voice has dropped now. It’s gone all whispery and weak. He clenches his hands.

“Ko-”

“And that’s meant that I haven’t been a very good… whatever we are.” He opens his eyes again, breathes out as he looks at Shuichi. “You’ve been hurt. You’ve needed support, and I’ve- I’ve been trying, but I’ve also been. Weird and bitter, I guess. Ha.” He laughs. “I just. I’m sorry that I have trouble with my emotions. I’m sorry I take it out on you. I’m sorry that even if I was helpful physically and I got your work together and I remind you of your medication, that I wasn’t able to be very supportive… emotionally, which is. Which is more important right now. I’m sure I added to your stress. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I… that I made things worse.”

“I’m sorry that I withdrew,” Shuichi says softly. “I- I’m a coward. I should’ve- we should’ve talked about all this a long time ago. You should have. I should have. I was so, so scared of finding out that things had changed, or… or being rejected, or- it feels so stupid. I was so worried about hurting you that I hurt you. I’m sorry for being gone so much.” His eyes are like mead- thick, syrupy. Sweet, wet, strong. Kokichi feels drunk every time he looks at them. “We don’t know what we’re doing,” he murmurs, and his voice is getting a little choked, now, and Kokichi is biting his lip, and Shuichi is looking at him so much, so much. “There’s not really a guidebook for getting over this specific kind of trauma, let alone- navigating something like this. I’m sorry we didn’t manage to do it as easily as we should-”

“Should have?” Kokichi’s not crying. He doesn’t cry. Not again. “I think we did pretty decently. Neither of us moved out. You didn’t get addicted to opiods. I… I called you when I missed you.” That feels like just as big of a challenge as anything else.

“You did,” Shuichi murmurs. “I’m really glad.”

Kokichi steps close, again. He’s got all that out of the way. “I’m not a very nice person.”

Shuichi tilts his head, slightly. “Well, no,” he says, and for a moment it feels like someone throwing him into a cold lake. “But you’re a good person. You care about others. You look after them. You have morals, and passions, and you’re loyal and dedicated and put your friends before yourself.”

Kokichi swallows. He doesn’t cry. “I don’t have friends. DICE weren’t-” And he can’t quite say it, can’t finish it, even with his voice all weak and husky.

Shuichi smiles, even though there are tears dripping down his face. “You have thirteen people and a robot who all adore you,” he says. “Do you really think no one sees you as a friend? After the pancakes? After baseball? After you leading them all to safety?”

“I picked some locks in the sewers, don’t make it sound so dramatic.” His heart is beating so hard it almost hurts. He doesn’t know how he’s feeling. Is it good? Is it good, to feel like you can’t catch your breath?

Shuichi leans forward, just a little, but it feels like miles. They are still standing far enough apart that they could be friends. There’s still enough distance that it could be casual.   
It’s not.

“Kokichi,” Shuichi says, softly. “I love you.”

He has to shut his eyes. It’s like a wave of water passing through him, the moon heavy over his head. “I.” He wets his lips. He takes a breath. 

“You don’t have to say it,” Shuichi murmurs, and he is standing in their living room, still a friendly distance away, and he is so kind and good and clever and he loves Kokichi and he is not close enough. 

Kokichi steps forward, grabs the front of his shirt. It’s stupid. It’s stupid. He already knows. They both already know.   
He inhales, slowly, adjusts his grip in the shirt, twists his fingers in. “Shuichi,” he breathes, and he looks up, watches the way his detective’s eyes grow soft and wet and honey-colored, the way his mouth parts, just slightly, as he lets out a breath. “I love.” He closes his eyes. “I love you.”

Getting it out is like rain on a flowerbed after a drought. It’s like a cherry tree finally blossoming. It’s like a thousand heartbreaks and a thousand murmured conversations all at once. He says it again. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you- I love you, I love you, I love you so much, _Shuichi-”_

And then Shucihi’s arms are around his back, and they’re embracing, they’re holding each other tonight, they are shaking and swaying and Kokichi is still speaking, still babbling confessions that he’s been trying to get out for months, that he can hardly bear to say and that he wants to, anyway, and he’s crying like a baby, sobbing his lungs out, he almost can’t speak around the flower blooming in his throat.

“I love you too,” Shuichi whispers, his voice hollow and breathy and he’s crying too, because Shuichi is a sap who cries at sad movies and when Akamatsu is particularly nice to him and whenever Kokichi opens up and makes a fool of himself. “God, Kokichi, I- I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”

And Kokichi is pulling away, scrabbling at Shuichi’s arms, pawing at his shoulders, his chest, like he’s climbing him, reaching out until he’s got his face in his hands and he says “kiss me-”

And Shuichi does. 

Shuichi leans down, and his arms are still tight around Kokichi’s back, and as soon as Kokichi closes his eyes they’re kissing. Shuichi’s mouth is against his, and it’s just- it’s just another touch. It’s stupid that this is so meaningful. It’s stupid that they both hesitate, at the same time, as they slot together. It’s stupid that it feels so- so reverent, his hands on Shuichi’s face, his fingers tracing his cheekbones, his head tilted sideways, moving with him. The way their lips brush- hesitant, shy, so unfamiliar. They’ve done this before. It doesn’t deserve to feel so different. It shouldn’t be so frightening, so comforting, to press your mouth to someone else’s.

Shuichi opens his mouth and it’s like communion. It’s like finding a pearl in the sea. Kokichi presses closer, strokes over his cheek, traces his teeth over his lower lip, just for a moment. 

They’re kissing. Really, really kissing, and it’s good and it’s painful and it’s everything he’s wanted. It’s so good that he feels awful for indulging. It’s so good that he can’t bring himself to stop.

They part, slowly, and it doesn’t feel like something so soft should leave him so _breathless_ , but Kokichi just. He has to take a moment, has to adjust to the way it feels to have Shuichi’s hands on him and Shuichi’s mouth only an inch away and Shuichi’s eyes, still half-lidded, flicking from his lips to his own gaze. The way it feels to know that if he wants, whenever he wants, he can kiss Shuichi again.

So he does. And Shuichi kisses back. He kisses back the third time, too, and the fourth, and he keeps kissing back even as Kokichi drags him over to the couch and pushes at his coat until it drops off and until they’re falling over each other into the cushions and blankets and the mess of a bed they’ve created. 

Between kisses, Shuichi says, “we should probably stop sleeping on the couch, huh?” and all Kokichi can do is roll his eyes and drag him down again. 

When he starts laughing, Shuichi takes his face in his hands and brushes his mouth over Kokichi’s cheeks, his nose, his lips again, his forehead, and he murmurs just- the softest things into his skin, things that make him squirm, make him wild, make him scrabble, frenzied, at Shuichi’s shirt for purchase. 

Shuichi says _“I love the way your voice changes,”_ and it sounds like burning in Kokichi’s chest. He says, “I can’t begin to express how much I care for you- so much, Kokichi, more than anything-” and he says “I think about you all the time,” and he says “all your jokes delight me,” and he says “you care so much, and you’re so bold and selfless and incredible,” and Kokichi can barely think.

He doesn’t even have the excuse of sensuality- Shuichi’s hands barely leave his face, and when they do, it’s to interlock with his own, or rub his back and shoulders, or to thread through his hair. But every touch is so deliberate, so sweet- there are no more excuses, no more holding hands while doing something else, no more looking away while they cuddle, no accidentally brushing arms or kisses in the middle of a fight- everything is done like they don’t want to do anything else and it’s driving him crazy.

And the worst part is that he can see it’s driving Shuichi crazy, too. 

Kokichi manages to string his thoughts together long enough to say “for someone so smart, you’re so soft-hearted, mister detective,” and it’s meant to be teasing but he must not be as collected as he thought, because it comes out quiet and cracked and smiling and Shuichi melts like he’s never wanted to hear anything else.

They spend hours there. Literally, hours, holding each other and talking in hushed tones that are so embarrassing Kokichi would have to burn anyone who overheard. Exchanging kisses, shifting to sit closer, then adjusting to kiss again, then moving apart to sit eye to eye and talk again in more words that are… pointless, that will be forgotten as soon as they come together again, because every intended meaning comes through in tiny gestures. All they’ve had is quiet intimacy- for so long- that it’s almost hard to know what to do with all of it. The chaste kisses on his fingertips make Kokichi want to scream. When he sits down in Shuichi’s lap (something he’s done many, many times before,) Shuichi has to turn away for a moment to stop his voice from disappearing. 

Kokichi only realizes how much time has passed when Shuichi’s phone buzzes. 

Carefully unwinding his arms from the detective’s shoulders, Kokichi raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t think to turn the volume off _before_ we started making out?”

“I was- distracted,” Shuichi says slowly, eyes flicking from his phone to Kokichi’s face, a hand reaching out awkwardly. He looks like he wants to look at the phone, but can’t quite tear his eyes away. It’s a nice look. Suits him. 

Kokichi’s sure his expression must be nothing but smug at this point, even if his face is still rather flushed. “You can answer it, if you want. I don’t mind.”

The phone continues to buzz in Shuichi’s palm as he squints at him. “You just want me to embarrass myself.”

“How dare you! I have only the purest intentions of behaving myself and letting you continue your important business in peace.” Because he is Ouma Kokichi, he manages to pull himself together enough to give Shuichi a very innocent look that will absolutely not convince him. “Come on, it’s just Momota.”

Shuichi double-takes between him and the caller ID, then blinks. “I can just hang up,” he says. “I mean, I would hang up even if it was work. You- this is more important, right now.” And he’s blushing but not looking away, and it’s making Kokichi’s heart do weird flippy-floppy things, and it’s probably better if he has a break from Shuichi and his dumb face for a bit.

So Kokichi waves a hand dismissively and flops backwards into a pile of pillows. “I’m good. I’ll just expect extra nice treatment later. Besides, he might be dying or something. Could have forgotten how to cook and burned his place down. Maybe he got lost in his own apartment.”

Shuichi must really be in a good mood, because he only sighs in a fond kind of way as he accepts the call and lifts the phone to his ear. “Hey, Kaito.” A pause. Probably the astronaut talking too fast to comprehend, here. 

Kokichi takes the time to admire Shuichi, in all his lovely, detective-y, glory. He can do that now. If someone else stared at Shuichi, he could call them out. Only Kokichi gets to watch the way he runs a hand through his hair only for his cowlick to bob back up. Only Kokichi gets to see the way his eyes crease, fondly, the barest fleck of eyeliner on the skin beneath them. Only Kokichi gets to sit up and kiss him midway through a sentence.

So he does. Shuichi makes a delightfully flustered sound but kisses back. He can hear Momota going _“Shuichi? Shuichi, bro? You alright?”_ through the phone as if a murmured ‘mmph!’ is enough to spell doom for he detective.

Shuichi pushes his fingers through Kokichi’s hair and pulls him off like he’s a misbehaving cat. Kokichi smirks over at him and is even more pleased about the way Shuichi can barely hold his glare without his mouth turning up. He reaches for the phone again. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, sorry. Kokichi just came in and surprised me.”

Kokichi can’t hear the next sentence, but it makes Shuichi’s smile go soft and shy all of a sudden. “Um. Yeah, we are. We just had a talk before you rang, actually.” He lowers the phone, holding the microphone against his shoulder as if to muffle it, and looks over to Kokichi. “Kaito’s inviting us out to…. brunch. He and Kaede are trying to get everyone together- for a weekly thing again, I think.”

Kokichi pouts. “Saturday brunch removes all the fun of Saturday sports, though! You know how much I love exercise and hate sweet food, Shuichi.”

Shuichi raises an eyebrow and smiles as he lifts the phone again. “Yeah, we’ll be there.” He pauses. “Kokichi’s looking forward to it.”

“ _Traitor,_ ” Kokichi hisses.

But Shuichi just gives him a bright look and reaches over to squeeze his hand, and Kokichi’s heart starts flopping around again like a frog or something. “You’re smiling,” he says, completely hypocritically, as if his face isn’t also looking like someone’s pinching his cheeks.

“Am not,” Kokichi insists, sticking his nose in the air. Shuichi’s fingers lift and brush against his, and almost helplessly Kokichi extends his own and they lace them together like a pair of lovey-dovey idiots.

And through the phone, Kokichi can hear Kaito groan, _“dude, I’m glad you two have got your shit sorted out but please don’t make me listen to you flirting.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! just a note here to say, first of all: donate and support the protests happening in america right now as much as you can. there are a few really helpful links i've reblogged on my tumblr. acab.  
> second, related to this: i'm going to post one more chapter to this (you'll notice i've extended the chapters for my sanity) and then hold off on the last two for a while. that's because the last two are intended to deal with some political movements and outbursts and the aftermath of them and i feel it would be tasteless to upload content like that right now. HOWEVER i don't plan on disappearing again! i have a bunch of hiatus content i've made and i'll probably be posting a bunch of 1-3 chapter fics after i post the next chapter of this one. (and i don't plan on leaving you on a cliffhanger again. sorry.) i'll probably finally get around to posting my talent swap stuff, too, so... look out for that if you want edge

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "therefore you and me" by eve which is a BOP and i had on repeat while listening to this and also there's a cute saiouma animatic here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvy-LrW1yZY) and it makes me EMOTIONAL
> 
> also i made a tumblr and it's @unseeliekey! come hang out if you wanna chat to me about dr or writing or something! (dont ask me about my ideas for a TAZ au. dont ask me about my ideas for a TAZ au. please god i have so many fics i need to write-)
> 
> !!!!!!!!!!!!!! BEAUTIFUL ART ALERT WEE WOO WEE WOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( https://senju-swag.tumblr.com/post/617320800961363968/you-know-im-like-a-ghost-i-see-it-in-your-face ) please admire! please look at it! there is so much detail and there is a gif and there are eyes and soft smiles and aaaa!!!!!!!!!! (um. spoilers i guess if you haven't read up to chapter 13?)


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